EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Jon Favreau

[0] Hello, everybody.

[1] Welcome to your bonus episode of Armchair Expert, something we call Experts on Expert.

[2] We have a very smart human being on experts today.

[3] Very smart.

[4] Very smart.

[5] Maniac.

[6] And just to alleviate any confusion, there are two very well -known John Favros, and we have one of the two well -known John Favros.

[7] But we do not have the movie director, actor, John Favro.

[8] We have the famous speechwriter and host of Pod Save America.

[9] John Favro.

[10] Yeah.

[11] And Monica and my wife, boy, were they in a tizzy leading up to this one?

[12] Monica, you want to tell everyone how you felt emotionally and physically when you found out we were going to talk to J .F.?

[13] Well, he's definitely hashtag Monica loves boys.

[14] Big time, right?

[15] Big time.

[16] Bolzoi.

[17] Yeah.

[18] Yeah, he's very smart, very cute.

[19] Uh -huh.

[20] That's enough.

[21] Did you, did you, like, really Hem and Hall over your outfit before you?

[22] you showed up that day?

[23] Be honest.

[24] What did I wear?

[25] I don't remember.

[26] I do.

[27] You were in a bikini top and a miniskirt.

[28] No, that's my normal.

[29] That's my normal every day.

[30] That was your standard Thursday look.

[31] Yeah, exactly.

[32] Well, enough about that.

[33] I don't want to demean the brilliance of Favro by boring you with Monica and I's seventh grade sensibility about who we have crushes on.

[34] So without further ado, please enjoy the ever.

[35] Oh, you know, no, no. No, no, no, no, I want to say more.

[36] What I also want to say is that, you know, I was even a little hesitant to have Favreau on, even though I am a huge fan of Favro's because I like to keep this podcast as political as much as possible.

[37] Or if I'm giving a political opinion, I certainly want to service the other argument on the other side of that.

[38] And so, you know, Favro is a very left -leaning, outspoken political person.

[39] But I think even if you want to avoid politics, this will still be very stimulating to you.

[40] you and we do address that very issue.

[41] Yes, we do.

[42] Please enjoy.

[43] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add free right now.

[44] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[45] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[46] If anyone knows how I'm talking to a microphone, I assume it's you.

[47] John Favro, welcome to armchair expert.

[48] Thanks for having me. And what needs to be clarified right out of the fucking gates, although I'll do it in the intro, is clearly people could think I'm talking to the director and my personal friend, John Favro.

[49] Happens all the time.

[50] It must be a lot of hilarity.

[51] And you're probably sick of talking about it, but I'm going to make you anyways.

[52] No, it's funny.

[53] Because I always have a new story about it.

[54] Oh, good.

[55] because now that I live in Los Angeles and I've lived here for the last three, four years now, I start getting emails.

[56] And I think it's like the agencies are all mixing up who we are because it always seems to be an agency's fault.

[57] Yeah.

[58] And are you at the same agency as him?

[59] No, but I think we're, I don't know, but I think we keep getting mixed up.

[60] And I got an email the other day like, hey, I know you're super busy with the Lion King right now.

[61] I have an idea for a project.

[62] Whoa, you could really run with that.

[63] You might be able to launch an incredible directing career.

[64] I should just do that.

[65] But yeah, that happens a lot.

[66] You have screenplay writing aspirations, yeah?

[67] I used to.

[68] Then I realized I couldn't really do it well.

[69] Well, hold on, though.

[70] How many times do you try it?

[71] Just once.

[72] Yeah, that's...

[73] No, so yeah, Tommy Vitor and I came out here, thought we were going to be screenwriters, pitched one screenplay, and then it was going to be a television show.

[74] and when it didn't go after a couple pitches, we sort of gave up.

[75] And then the podcast thing ended up happening, so it was fine.

[76] Yeah.

[77] But often aspiring writers will ask me for advice on screenwriting, and I say, write three shitty ones, step one.

[78] You can't read enough books to sit down and write a great first screen for it.

[79] You just have to write a shitty one.

[80] And then read it and be regretful and go, oh, I won't make that mistake this time.

[81] Then you'll make a new one.

[82] Well, that's part of the issue, too, is you want to prepare as much as possible.

[83] so you read Save the Cat and all the different screenwriting books and you study everything and then you're like, all right, let's just fucking write it.

[84] Yeah, yeah.

[85] And it becomes daunting, right?

[86] So daunting.

[87] If you read story by McKee or any of these, you're like, God damn, this is technical shit I'm stepping into.

[88] I know, and it's not really.

[89] Yeah.

[90] Were you doing that after the White House start?

[91] Yes, yeah.

[92] Left the White House in 2013, started writing our pilot.

[93] And then we also did some consulting on the side.

[94] I did some speech writing for people.

[95] That's so crazy.

[96] But then so are you like, why can't I sell this?

[97] Like I just wrote for Obama.

[98] Yeah, it was not good enough.

[99] I just had the best writing job on the earth.

[100] Really TBS?

[101] Really TBS?

[102] It's up to your high bar of.

[103] It was about young people in a campaign and it was sort of hopeful.

[104] You know, like it was.

[105] And I think the mood at the time when Obama was still president is we don't really want store.

[106] We want dark.

[107] stories.

[108] We want political stories that are dark and cynical and all that kind of stuff.

[109] And at the time with Obama didn't sell, of course, then now Trump's president.

[110] Well, and if you notice, because this seems to be blowing over a lot of people's heads in this industry is that it flipped 180.

[111] So we had all the ANSI heroes during Obama, and now people want just general heroes, heroes.

[112] They do.

[113] Yeah, it's fascinating.

[114] I just want to add one more thing to the Fabro Favro thing, which I think is so funny, is that one of the things on Wikipedia that would make you unique is that your nickname is Favs but that's also Favreau's nickname Is it?

[115] Oh, I didn't know that.

[116] And here's another one.

[117] You're afraid of flying.

[118] He is also incredibly afraid of flying.

[119] I hope he doesn't mind me saying that but I think he's honest about it.

[120] But yes, he hates.

[121] He never said that to me. Because we finally met each other once I got out here.

[122] Yeah, that's what I was a few times.

[123] I wanted to know.

[124] So where did you guys meet for the first time?

[125] Well, first we had emailed each other when we found out, you know, this is going on.

[126] When we found out we had the same name.

[127] And then when I moved out here, he was doing a pop -up for chef.

[128] Oh, uh -huh.

[129] At Animal, that restaurant.

[130] And so he invited me and my wife and my brother went.

[131] So both Favreau families met each other.

[132] His wife and kids and we all hung out.

[133] Is there any genealogical connection?

[134] Because you're at least both from the East Coast.

[135] You're Massachusetts.

[136] There could be.

[137] Yeah, we're, you know, my father's family's from Montreal originally, a couple of generations back, Montreal and New Hampshire.

[138] So some French Canadians.

[139] And then the other thing I wanted to say before we get into your incredible life story is I very much look up to you.

[140] Yes.

[141] I think you're absolutely incredible.

[142] I really, really do admire you.

[143] And yet, I was on the fence about having you on this podcast because I made a decision early on that this would be a safe haven away from politics.

[144] just because it's inescapable at this moment.

[145] I can't consume anything that doesn't have some political aspect to it.

[146] And so I want specifically for this to be a break from that.

[147] Sure.

[148] And I thought, well, how do I talk to Favreau in it not be polarizing?

[149] Who are you without it?

[150] And you should be.

[151] And this is kind of where I want to, this is what I want to talk to you about.

[152] you are employed kind of through politics, right?

[153] Right.

[154] That is both your career and whatever interest you have in it.

[155] Right.

[156] Because you were a speechwriter, of course, and then you have a very political podcast, and then you're going to do a documentary.

[157] You were just saying...

[158] Yeah, we just released The Wilderness, which is a documentary about the Democratic Party.

[159] Yes.

[160] That's our new podcast.

[161] So this, what I'm about to say excludes you.

[162] Because you really are active all day long in politics, And there's good reason for that.

[163] But I would surmise that for about 90 % of us, our total output, our real total political output is at best maybe you're voting in midterm.

[164] So you're voting once every two years.

[165] And I think it is a little cuckoo that people spend a good chunk of their day talking about something that ultimately the only outcome is that they will go cast a ballot in four years.

[166] And my example would be I go to the dentist once a year.

[167] Right.

[168] And if every time you saw me, I was like, oh, I'm going to the dentist in 11 months.

[169] Oh, I'm going to go to the dentist.

[170] All these thoughts on tea.

[171] You think I was fucking nuts.

[172] Or I got to smog my car once every two years in California.

[173] And if I thought about it all year, every year leading up to it, it doesn't seem entirely productive for us.

[174] I think my personal opinion is we're a little over politicized.

[175] How do you feel about that?

[176] Tell me why I'm wrong.

[177] Let me also exclude people who actually go out and join marches and they're a part of, you know, public.

[178] rallies and stuff.

[179] So those people are actively doing something, but just talking about politics all day long, when all you're ultimately going to do is cast a ballot, you don't really need to talk about it for four years leading up to casting the ballot.

[180] What is the purpose of it?

[181] I guess I completely understand why most people feel that way.

[182] Because I think in order to care a lot about politics and to care a lot about what happens, you have to be able to draw the connections between the decisions that are made by people in power and how that affects your everyday life.

[183] And I think for a lot of people in the country, for a long time, and it might be changing now, they do not see those connections.

[184] And so politics became something where there was a bunch of people on television in D .C. who were just like yelling at each other all the time and playing like awful games and it seemed very cynical and I mean at least what I saw during the Obama years was everyone got really excited in 2008 about Barack Obama and they thought okay this is going to bring change this is something different but there was still this feeling in a way that it's a transactional view of politics so it is I'm going to give you my vote I'm going to go like you're saying I'm going to go to the polls I'm going to give you my vote and then you go and your business is politics, so you go fix everything with the country.

[185] You're going to go back to my life.

[186] And I think what we realized, really, certainly what I realized is that transactional view of politics isn't quite sufficient because we ended up with Donald Trump as president.

[187] And a lot of people are like, well, how did that happen?

[188] We had Barack Obama's president, so why is Donald Trump president now?

[189] Well, because a lot of people in the country didn't really pay attention.

[190] They didn't vote in midterms, which is, I mean, the fact that we didn't have, we had such low rates of turnout in the 2010 midterms and the 2014 midterms is probably the single biggest reason that Barack Obama did not accomplish more with his presidency.

[191] Because Democrats got slacked in both of those midterms and we had a Republican Congress, they didn't want to cooperate with Barack Obama.

[192] We didn't get anything done.

[193] Right.

[194] And that in some ways led to a frustration that boiled over and made Donald Trump president as well, along with a whole bunch of other factors.

[195] Yes, but again, so I think the call to action would be, whether you're Democrat or Republican or whatever, the call to action would be vote every opportunity you have to vote.

[196] Right.

[197] But beyond that, what are people really going to physically do?

[198] Like in my silo of liberal progressives here in L .A., I go to dinner and I hear the exact same viewpoint.

[199] over and over and over again.

[200] I already hold those viewpoints, so I don't really know why we're getting them out there on the table.

[201] Most certainly we're not convincing any table next to us that happens to be conservative that we're making brilliant points.

[202] Maybe this is a cynical view, but I just feel like we have our opinions.

[203] They have their opinions.

[204] We're not doing a good job of bringing anyone over to either side.

[205] Or do you think we are doing a good job of that?

[206] When you say we, I think, I certainly think.

[207] No, I just mean any side.

[208] No, but like we're in, like you said, we are in quite a bubble here in Los Angeles.

[209] And we are both fairly privileged people.

[210] Yes.

[211] And you know.

[212] You seem to be white.

[213] I am.

[214] Right.

[215] And, you know, and well off.

[216] And so, and I've noticed this, especially since I've moved to Los Angeles.

[217] And I also like, you know, having spent a lot of time here for fundraisers with various Democratic politicians, you get a certain Hollywood set at fundraisers.

[218] Yeah.

[219] And they're all asking the same questions and they all have the same opinions.

[220] And the conversation after a while makes you want to, you know, you know, pull your hair out.

[221] Yeah.

[222] But I do think out in the country, there are organizers and activists on the ground who are going door to door.

[223] And they are finding people who have never voted before, have never participated in politics before.

[224] And they are changing their minds or at least persuading them that it will make a difference in their life if they come out to vote.

[225] Yes.

[226] And I think that, you know, we probably need more of that and less of, oh, my, God, did you see the latest in the Mueller investigation?

[227] That's crazy.

[228] It tries me nuts.

[229] Donald Trump's crazy.

[230] What am I going to do?

[231] Okay, now I got to go to Whole Foods.

[232] Yes.

[233] Well, my kind of, and I love my wife, and she actually gets way more things done in this country than I do.

[234] So she earns the all these rights.

[235] She's very involved.

[236] She's gotten bills passed in Congress.

[237] It blows my mind.

[238] She did a great video on the, I remember that.

[239] She went with people over a county, like getting us to dedicate some military funding to that.

[240] You know, it's incredible.

[241] I totally applaud her.

[242] But at the same.

[243] time, she is on the monkey crack dispenser about whatever thing Trump does each day.

[244] And I will say to her, are you still evaluating whether you like him or dislike him?

[245] Like, the verdict's out.

[246] You don't like him.

[247] You think he doesn't have integrity.

[248] We all, you get it, I get it.

[249] Like, I don't, we seem to be addicted to more proof.

[250] Well, that's also, I mean, I talk about this all the time.

[251] we talk about this in the pod, like democratic politicians, the ones who are running for office right now, the candidates, they are not spending a lot of their time going to different events and talking about how much they hate Donald Trump.

[252] Because like you said, pretty much everyone has made up their mind how they feel about this person.

[253] What they're talking about is like, okay, here's my plan for expanding access to health care.

[254] Here's my plan for raising the minimum wage.

[255] Here's my plan for debt -free college.

[256] So, they're talking about ideas that would actually make a difference in people's lives.

[257] And I think and especially as Democrats, we're the party who believes that government, through collective action, can make a difference in people's lives.

[258] And so if we don't make the case as to why that's true or next time we're in power actually pass legislation that makes that true and connect the dots for people that says, okay, the fact that you were just able to make sure that an insurance company covered you, even though you had cancer before, that is the direct result.

[259] of the Affordable Care Act or whatever else we pass on health care.

[260] Like, we have to make those connections to people.

[261] That seemed to be the one issue that actually got people to cross an aisle a little bit.

[262] It did.

[263] You saw some older voters that had been traditionally conservative voters, lose some health care.

[264] Or I just saw them at these town hall meetings where they were pretty rough on their own Republican representatives, which seemed new to me. Well, it's an issue that really matters to people.

[265] And, you know, it was part of the project I just did with the, wilderness, I sat down with voters outside of Detroit and voters outside of Houston.

[266] And the voters outside of Detroit were Obama Trump voters.

[267] So there were people who voted for Barack Obama in 8 and 12 and then voted for Donald Trump in 16.

[268] And in Texas, it was people who voted for Trump in 12, I mean, voted for Obama in 12.

[269] And then in 16, they either stayed home or they voted for a third party.

[270] So these people who have voted Democrat in the past, but didn't for some reason in 16.

[271] Yeah.

[272] And most interested in the Detroit suburb.

[273] Yes.

[274] So universally, I talked to eight people.

[275] Every single person in the focus group was upset and ashamed with their vote for Donald Trump.

[276] So I know it's very different than the, because what happens is, you know, the New York Times and all these people, they go out and they talk to Trump voters.

[277] But a lot of times they talk to Republicans who voted for Trump who had voted for Romney before Trump.

[278] Those people are going to be with Trump.

[279] They're not really going to change their minds.

[280] Right.

[281] There's a bunch of people in the middle who go back and forth.

[282] And so all these people are like, you know, I don't, I think he tweets like crazy.

[283] He seems to only care about himself.

[284] I thought he was going to fix things.

[285] I thought he was going to change Washington.

[286] There's so many more skeletons in his closet.

[287] And then I asked, well, why did you vote for him in the first place?

[288] And they said, well, we thought he was going to shake up Washington.

[289] And we thought he was going to change things.

[290] And a lot of people said, we thought he was going to protect my health care.

[291] And like, that can drive a lot of people nuts because you're like, what?

[292] You thought he was going to protect your health care?

[293] Yeah.

[294] But, you know, when you think about what he said during the campaign, he was out there saying, I'm going to raise taxes.

[295] on hedge fund people, I'm going to protect Medicare and Medicaid.

[296] So then I said, well, what do you want to do with health care now?

[297] You know, there's some people who want to keep the affordable care act.

[298] There's some people who want to improve on it.

[299] There's some people who want to get rid of it.

[300] And all these people who voted for Donald Trump were saying, you know, I think it's time for Medicare for all.

[301] I think we need single payer like Canada.

[302] Right.

[303] You're a Trump voter who thinks we need government -run, you know, universal health care.

[304] Yeah.

[305] I think, although I will say, I think all of us hold lots of contradictory points.

[306] Yes.

[307] Especially voters who don't pay attention all that time.

[308] Well, also, I believe it's healthy.

[309] Yeah.

[310] I believe that when you are just lock, stock, and barrel, supporting every aspect of a platform, to me, it's no different than deity worship.

[311] Like, you're going to go along with anything.

[312] So part of me says there are, you know, personally, there are a lot of aspects of the person.

[313] progressive, liberal thought process that I buck up against, you know?

[314] And I think, oh, it's a little dangerous.

[315] I see people going pretty far down this path.

[316] And actually, I would argue these are anti -liberal principles or anti -progressive.

[317] And yet your choice is basically just to be all in or all out.

[318] I guess that's not here nor there.

[319] But it's relatively new, too.

[320] I mean, we used to have parties where in the Democratic Party, there were conservatives in the Democratic Party.

[321] In the Republican Party, they were liberals in the Republican Party.

[322] And this sorting between the two parties has sort of taken place over the last 10, 20 years, especially, whereas now the Democratic Party is a liberal party and the Republican Party is a conservative party uniformly.

[323] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[324] What's up, guys?

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[333] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

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[343] And so here's what I'm always wrestling with when I'm going through Twitter.

[344] And what it appears to me...

[345] Well, that's the worst.

[346] Yeah, it's already a flawed result, not a double -blind test.

[347] It appears to me that the left has gotten super far left and the right has gotten super far right.

[348] Now, I don't actually have any data, because I am curious, is that more a product of the furthest 10 % of the lefts making all the headlines?

[349] They're saying the most provocative things.

[350] And the furthest to the right, 10 % of the conservatives, they're getting all the headlines.

[351] So all the headlines I'm getting are basically from the two outside edges of both parties.

[352] Because what it appears to me is that centrism's dead.

[353] Who are the centrist?

[354] Is anyone a centrist?

[355] Is that even?

[356] I wanted to start the alt -centric movie.

[357] Or it's like, okay, both parties are making some good points on different issues.

[358] And nobody's, like, doesn't anyone want to cherry -pick the good ideas from both parties?

[359] I mean, I think part of it is the nature of Twitter and media where the loudest voices, the most strident voices on both sides are obviously going to get the headlines like you're saying.

[360] I also think a big part of it is Donald Trump and what has happened to the Republican Party over the last 10, 15, 20 years.

[361] They've succeeded in getting increasingly extreme.

[362] Right.

[363] But the left hasn't.

[364] I mean, like Obama was pretty centrist if you evaluate him today, wouldn't you say?

[365] I guess when you, I think it's - He came into office saying he didn't support gay marriage.

[366] Right.

[367] And he evolved on that.

[368] And he's pretty militaristic.

[369] Yeah.

[370] There were many things that made him, you know, by today's lens, very centrist.

[371] Although I think, yeah, I, I, some people will argue that for sure.

[372] I mean, like, it's funny, like, I haven't.

[373] I mean, from my own personal perspective, I haven't changed any of my views over the last, however, many years between the Obama and Trump administrations.

[374] What I have changed, or what I'm probably more vocal about, is how scared I am of what the Republican Party under Donald Trump is doing to the country.

[375] More so than I even was about the Republican Party when Obama was president, which I was no fan of because we were in the White House and they didn't let us.

[376] do anything, or when Bush was president, who, you know, took us to war in Iraq, which was one of the worst decisions in history.

[377] So I don't feel like I've changed my views at all, but on policy issues.

[378] But I do feel like I am more alarmed than I was before.

[379] Right.

[380] I just want to point out something that's cute and yet very obvious to everyone, but it just occurred to me is like when I just said Obama was militaristic, what I'm forgetting, like I think you and I are just talking about an ex -president.

[381] And then it occurred to me like, oh, I'm also talking about this dude's friend.

[382] Oh, I've heard it all.

[383] I know, but I actually forgot to factor in the fact that I am speaking about your friend.

[384] So jealous of your friends with him.

[385] Oh, God.

[386] Well, as you were saying it, I'm trying to think of like, yeah, I mean, he's the guy who ran for president and was one of the only Democrats who opposed the war in Iraq when a ton of other Democrats voted for.

[387] Yeah.

[388] That's not very militaristic.

[389] No. He also, you know, ordered the Bin Laden mission.

[390] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[391] And drone strikes.

[392] But then at the same time, he also took, you know, 90 % of the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

[393] So it's like, it is hard to categorize.

[394] It really is.

[395] And in fact, when I witnessed, let's just say, I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong, it did appear that his pre -presidency view on it versus once he was in the seat did evolve a bit.

[396] And my conclusion on that was, oh, when you get there, they do show you some shit that will change your worldview a little bit.

[397] I think that is exactly right.

[398] Right.

[399] I think you get there.

[400] And when you, you know, you're in the situation room every day and you get intelligence every day.

[401] Well, you're starting getting the real info, right?

[402] Well, look, you're trying to figure out as president.

[403] How do I defend the American people?

[404] How do I protect the American people?

[405] Yeah.

[406] While not starting a bunch of wars, while not, you know.

[407] Or having a policy that creates blowback and more wars.

[408] Yeah, or leads to civilian deaths.

[409] Yes.

[410] or leads to any kind of deaths, right, from wars or from conflict.

[411] And so you're constantly trying to balance that.

[412] And I think Obama would say you make the best decision with the best information that you have, knowing that Obama used to say, if a decision in the federal government in this country gets to my desk, it's because no one else could figure out what to do.

[413] And so both of the options I have are shitty options.

[414] Yeah, yeah.

[415] And I have to figure out which is the less shitty option.

[416] And that's the role of president.

[417] That's not very, like, glamorous or fulfilling.

[418] But a lot of times that's what you face when you're in the White House.

[419] Yeah.

[420] Well, and then let me be on record to say that I absolutely adore Obama.

[421] But it's also just my nature to be critical of the people I adore in addition to that.

[422] I'm just not all in, you know.

[423] Well, and everyone who is in public life makes decisions should be able to take criticism.

[424] Well, and the dude made a thousand decisions in eight years.

[425] And it's most certainly even if he's got the best percentage of any human alive and it's in the 90s, he made 100 bad decisions, right?

[426] Yeah.

[427] So I hear I was trying to avoid politics and I got completely bogged down in it.

[428] But I want to throw one other thing at you.

[429] And of course, I don't think you're in a position to have this view, nor should you.

[430] I think there should be people on both sides that are just passionately driven towards executing some policy they think are going to help people.

[431] So with that said, I do look at this country a little bit when I apply the lens of marriage to it.

[432] Because although I do think facts are vital, and I'm upset with the misuse of facts or the dispelling of facts on certain sides of the aisle, there are more things than facts.

[433] And all one has to do is get married to understand that.

[434] You know, your wife can be saying something to you that just is, it's just illogical.

[435] It doesn't actually make sense.

[436] But then you have to look beyond that and go like, well, what's important is she doesn't feel safe.

[437] And I need to forget this fact that I could win this.

[438] point and say, no, we didn't drive for 60 miles.

[439] It was a 20 mile trip.

[440] Whatever the thing is, right?

[441] You have to do that to maintain a relationship.

[442] Yeah.

[443] And here's what I, here's what I think about America.

[444] It's very, very, very divided.

[445] And if you were to offer me the solution where, okay, we're just going to secede from the union.

[446] We're going to have New York, Massachusetts, California, whatever.

[447] Washington, Oregon is a country.

[448] And then we're going to have the red states be a country.

[449] Yeah.

[450] Possible solutions.

[451] Okay, that could maybe solve it.

[452] But we will both acknowledge that's never happening.

[453] It's never, ever happened.

[454] And I don't think it would solve it.

[455] In fact, it may lead to a civil war.

[456] But also because like within the red states, within the blue states.

[457] Well, let's just say they all, they would migrate out or whatever.

[458] And then we'd have another immigration issue.

[459] But the point is, is what I'm saying is, that's not happening.

[460] Divorce is not an option.

[461] That is not an option for it.

[462] So if you're in a marriage and you recognize divorce is not an option, your remaining option is to try to make this thing work.

[463] Right.

[464] And so my frustration as someone who's actively tried to depoliticize myself, because I just got too wound up during that election.

[465] And then I was like, well, all I can do is vote.

[466] I voted and that's that.

[467] Like, you know, I don't know how wound up I can get about this.

[468] I just started thinking we're so divided and we're stuck together.

[469] So are we in the relationship where we're continuing?

[470] continuing to yell at each other's faults.

[471] Or are we in the relationship where we sit down with the therapist and we go, this scares me, this scares you.

[472] I can see where you're scared.

[473] And we start talking about emotions and we start talking about these things that could ultimately maybe heal us.

[474] And I just don't know who's voicing that.

[475] Is there anybody who's actively even aiming at all of us somehow learning to communicate a little bit?

[476] Yeah.

[477] Well, look, I mean, here's the other thing that I think about all the time is people like you and I could probably continue to lead a very good life if we turned away from politics unless we get into some massive nuclear conflict with North Korea barring that barring that but there's a lot of people in the country there's a ton of people in the country who if politics does not change they're going to have a really tough time or they're already really having a tough time sure if you're a separated family yeah if you're a separated family at the border, if you are on the wrong side of the criminal justice system in this country, if you don't have health care, right?

[478] So a million different reasons where there's people with less power and privilege than us that are really hurting and they need politics to work for them.

[479] Yes.

[480] But I will say that the basis of democracy, democracy is premised on the ability for us to persuade one another.

[481] Persuasion is at the heart of the promise of democracy.

[482] Yes.

[483] And if we cannot figure out a way to persuade people to come to our side, to form a coalition that is a majority governing coalition, and then to enact policies that are reflective of that governing coalition's priorities, then America fails.

[484] We're dead in the water.

[485] We're dead in the water.

[486] And when you say persuasion, it's not necessarily like, I'm an Obama supporter and I'm going to go, you know, or I'm a Clinton supporter or whatever, and I'm going to go find a hardcore Trump voter.

[487] and I'm going to sit there, even though they're, like, screaming racist things at me, and I'm going to go, I'm going to go persuade them.

[488] Right.

[489] Maybe that's not going to happen.

[490] Yeah.

[491] But there's a ton of people in this country who don't vote, who don't pay attention to politics, who go back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, right?

[492] There's a huge cohort of people who can be persuaded.

[493] And I think we have to figure out in this country, how do we get to a space where we can persuade the persuadable within a media environment that does not necessarily allow for that right now.

[494] And the reason it doesn't allow for that is because most of the media environment is screaming on Twitter, which is not convincing anyone.

[495] Or cable fucking news.

[496] I think the media environment, the way it hurts the progressive cause and Democrats more so than it hurts Republicans.

[497] Because Republicans fundamentally are a party that says, you know what, we don't really need government.

[498] Government will fuck up a one car parade.

[499] And so everyone should just go about live their lives.

[500] We shouldn't worry about any of this.

[501] And then that's it.

[502] But also, I don't hear either side acknowledging this either, which is, and you just made a great point.

[503] So we live in a democracy and we have all these different instruments that help us come to a compromise, hopefully.

[504] But what I don't hear either side seeming to appreciate is that by our fundamental design, we have conflicting goals.

[505] So we want liberty and we want equality.

[506] Right.

[507] And those are sometimes at odds.

[508] both principles that we very much want to service.

[509] So what we have to acknowledge right out of the gates is that by design, we will never have 100 % of one or the other.

[510] All we will have is a pendulum that's inching this way.

[511] And we go, oh, no, that's a little too much liberty.

[512] And we're going to need to inch it towards this way.

[513] And then we just keep kind of, you know, massaging this thing to make people happy in any current society.

[514] Right.

[515] And I think of this whole system, not unlike science, which is peer reviewed.

[516] You go, you have your hypothesis, you do some experimentation, you publish your paper.

[517] There's all these colleagues of yours and they say whether, you know, what are some holes in this?

[518] And I do think that both parties subscribe to this erroneous belief that if just they had the steering wheel, we'd be set.

[519] And I actually think both sides are required.

[520] They are our peer reviews.

[521] So they might, we might not agree with them, but it is their job.

[522] job to point out some flaws in our thinking, as it is our job to point out some flaws in their thinking.

[523] And it is this system that I think potentially has worked so well in the past and can continue to work so well in the past.

[524] But there seems to be zero appreciation from that opposing viewpoint.

[525] But I do think the opposing viewpoint is critical.

[526] I agree with that, although I think that right now we are so far out of balance towards what I believe is sort of conservative.

[527] I mean, we have been living under conservative governance now.

[528] And in a way, like you said, even when Obama was president, that was not the days of FDR, LBJ when they had gigantic Democratic majorities when passing a slew of progressive legislation, great society programs, blah, blah, like as a progressive, as a liberal, if we were in power, if Democrats were in the White House and in Congress, and we ended up passing a ton of government programs, care, housing, minimum wage, all this kind of stuff.

[529] And people started pointing out, okay, if your goal is to cover this many people and yet the government is screwing up the program this way, that way, and the other way, I want to hear those opposing views.

[530] Yeah, right.

[531] There's too much government.

[532] It's doing X and Y, and Z. Yeah.

[533] But what I believe in is the value of having a democracy where every person is able to have a voice, make a decision, have opportunity, a quality of opportunity, and that kind of stuff.

[534] And that is much different and antithetical to both the right -wing conservative viewpoint and a complete government -controlled central system.

[535] Because that does not very democratic.

[536] Right.

[537] It's not democratic at all.

[538] Right.

[539] And so the experiment that we're trying in this country that we have never perfected since the founding of the country is to try to make sure that the blessings of liberty and equality are an opportunity are as widely distributed to every person in this country as possible, right?

[540] Like the opening paragraph of the declaration, all men are created equal.

[541] I'm a tattooed on my low back.

[542] Right?

[543] All men are created equal, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[544] At the time, it wasn't true.

[545] At the time, they said all men are created equal, right?

[546] So it wasn't even true there.

[547] But even in the founding, there was this ideal that was our North Star as a country that we have been trying to reach ever since.

[548] And by the way, and the fact that we've never got there, we've made it, exactly.

[549] Exactly.

[550] All one needs to do, and I've, just by weird coincidence, I've gotten really interested in American early history.

[551] Probably for the last three years, I've been listening to books on tape about Carnegie and Rockefeller and, you know, Cornelius Vanderbilt and all these different things.

[552] But at any rate, when you get a taste of what America's been like, the majority of time it's been a country, it's been a fucking shit show.

[553] Yeah.

[554] So I always bump up against a little bit, this notion that we're all living in the world.

[555] worst of times.

[556] You just need to pick up any one of these books on American history to realize.

[557] No, during Reconstruction, there were men posted up at voting polls murdering black people.

[558] So yes, jurymandering is terrible.

[559] We need to fix it.

[560] All these things are true.

[561] But also, it was a lot worse.

[562] Ferry boat captains were smashing into each other to sink one another in their competition for money.

[563] That is 100 % correct.

[564] And in the realization that the history of our country has been an utter shit show lies hope.

[565] Yes, absolutely.

[566] That is a hopeful thing because it's not that we had some golden age that we have fallen away from.

[567] No. It is that this has been a struggle, an epic struggle from the beginning of the creation of this country.

[568] We're fucking monkeys all sharing the same spot on planet Earth.

[569] And we're trying to do something in America that no nation has ever done before, which is to have a huge, large, diverse nation of 300 plus million people work and function as a society that make sure that everyone has opportunity and that everyone's civil rights are being respected.

[570] And we've never done that perfectly in this country and no other country around the world has done it.

[571] No. So the work continues.

[572] And I also don't believe, I reject the notion that you have to be fatalistic to be motivated.

[573] You make a great point.

[574] Like it's very easy for me to say, oh, well, I'm only going to vote every two years.

[575] So why do I need to talk about it all day long?

[576] And you point out, yeah, because I'm not right now in a detention center.

[577] Which is absolutely true.

[578] But with that said, you don't also need to convince yourself that this is the most divided we've ever been because we fucking shot each other.

[579] Our bloodyest deadliest war was our war against ourselves.

[580] So, you know, some historical framework to me feels like it would be reasonable.

[581] Also, doing the daily barometer does not do anyone any good.

[582] How bad is this?

[583] Yes.

[584] How freaked out should we be?

[585] How crazy is it a little bit?

[586] Even Pinker, you occasionally need to step back and graph where we've been since 1700.

[587] Right.

[588] Like, you're going to see dips.

[589] And right now, you know, for your nice point of view, this is a big dip.

[590] But I will also argue that the George Bush dip created Obama.

[591] Like, weirdly, if any, as much as we need to thank you for writing speeches with him and his incredible, gregarious, charming nature, you don't have Obama or you don't have Bush.

[592] I don't think you have Obama.

[593] Like, I think we leapt forward a couple decades.

[594] as a result of that.

[595] So history is tricky and you don't really know what the outcome of some of these things are.

[596] One of the things we got caught up with in 2016 is what we hate, which is punditry and punditry is based on prediction.

[597] And so everyone's trying to figure out what's going to happen as opposed to figuring out a way to make it happen or not make it happen.

[598] And I think people's energy, and I think this is what you were getting at at the beginning, like people's daily energies are not well spent freaking themselves out about what's going on in the country, they are well spent working to change it.

[599] Our audience is a lot of liberals and political junkies who've been political junkies for a long, long time.

[600] Yes.

[601] We also have found that our audience is a lot of people who, young people, people who haven't voted before, who never paid attention to politics before Trump was president or didn't pay much attention to politics for Trump as president.

[602] And now they're paying attention because they're scared about Trump and they're angry and they want to change things and they want a better country.

[603] And so they're like, well, how do I do politics?

[604] Right, right.

[605] Because politics always seemed something that was annoying and in Washington and that sucked.

[606] And I want to figure out how to make a difference.

[607] And I do think spending your days, galvanizing people who have the same values and views as you to actually work to change things is worthwhile.

[608] I think just complaining at a dinner party is not really worthwhile.

[609] Let me just, I'll bring, I'll like a comparative analogy, which is I'm in AA.

[610] And, and And typically speaking, the request upon people in AA meeting is like, we don't need to hear about the 20 years you were drunk.

[611] We'd prefer to hear about the solution.

[612] Yeah, that's very good.

[613] And so I just feel like people owe it to themselves to at least make 10 % of your conversation about the potential solution as opposed to just lamenting about the problem endlessly.

[614] I mean, to go to move from politics to media.

[615] Like, this is one of the also to sex at some point.

[616] We can do that.

[617] Go to media right now.

[618] No, one of the reasons we wanted to start Cricket Media is because my big critique of the news is that the news gives you a great idea of all the worst problems in the world.

[619] And then at the end of the broadcast, it's like, and now for weather and sports, and we'll see you later.

[620] And you're left feeling helpless.

[621] I mean, someone once made the analogy that, like, watching the news is like watching a friend slowly drown behind a plate glass window.

[622] and you can see it happening, but you can't do anything about it.

[623] And I think when we started at the pod, it's company, I'm like, people will call us partisan for saying, go like Democrats, go organize, go do whatever.

[624] But we have to give people an idea of what to do about the bad news that they're getting.

[625] Because just taking in all the bad news, it's not going to do anything for you.

[626] And I think that's what 99 % of people are doing.

[627] They're just taking in, and it's a little treacherous.

[628] Yeah, that's right.

[629] Okay, well, I want to talk about.

[630] about you a little bit.

[631] Sure.

[632] Because you're a fascinating human being.

[633] John Favreau, aka Favs, Fear of Flying, directed, maid.

[634] And what was the great Christmas movie you did?

[635] Elf.

[636] Elf.

[637] It's the favorite.

[638] Great movie.

[639] You were born in 1981 in Massachusetts.

[640] Your mother was a schoolteacher?

[641] Yes, she was.

[642] And your father?

[643] He was a salesman.

[644] He was, as was mine.

[645] What did your father sell?

[646] It's funny.

[647] When he first met my mother, he was driving in Anheiser Bush beer truck.

[648] He was selling beer.

[649] Awesome.

[650] And then he ended up selling computers.

[651] And in sort of the first tech boom in the 90s, he was like, you know, in sales at some of these tech companies.

[652] Oh, interesting.

[653] Yeah.

[654] Did he give you the speech my dad gave me, which was, son, don't fool yourself.

[655] Everyone in this country is a salesman.

[656] And he just broke down how every single job.

[657] You're a teacher.

[658] You're selling these ideas.

[659] You got to sell these ideas to.

[660] I just made them Southern.

[661] That's not how it sounded.

[662] I didn't quite get that.

[663] speech, but I do think that me going into politics and being interested in politics is in part a direct result of my dad being a salesman, not just professionally, but in life.

[664] For sure, yeah.

[665] Just being a guy who's gregarious sells things.

[666] There's a lot of historical overlap between, right, like big tent preachers and salesmen.

[667] Yeah, there's a rich history.

[668] Did you go to a private school?

[669] No, public school.

[670] Public school.

[671] And you did well.

[672] I did well, I'm assuming.

[673] And you went to a Jesuit college called the Holy Cross.

[674] College of the Holy Cross, Western Massachusetts.

[675] And why that school?

[676] Pretty random.

[677] I basically because I didn't get into any of the Ivy League schools that I applied to.

[678] Okay.

[679] That's a great.

[680] And I ended up getting like an academic scholarship to Holy Cross.

[681] Okay.

[682] And so it became that or a couple others and it was easier to afford Holy Cross.

[683] And so I went to Holy Cross.

[684] And it was Jesuit.

[685] It was Jesuit.

[686] And tell us what the Jesuit approach is.

[687] Because I've heard people speak very favorably.

[688] People that are not even, they're not religious, but they've valued that time they spent in the Jesuit tutelage.

[689] And I did too.

[690] And I was raised Catholic.

[691] Okay.

[692] But we were a family who went to church, a couple Sundays a month.

[693] And then as we got older, Christmas and Easter.

[694] Sure, sure.

[695] Because my dad was Catholic.

[696] There's a term for that, isn't there?

[697] Yeah.

[698] It was like cafeteria Catholic.

[699] Oh, that's nice.

[700] Well, that's like you can pick what you want from the Catholic religion.

[701] But my dad was a Catholic.

[702] My mom was Greek Orthodox, so we weren't like a super, super religious family.

[703] But I never got too much out of going to church in my suburban Boston town.

[704] Right.

[705] And then I went to Holy Cross, like I said, sort of by accident, not because it was religious school at all.

[706] But the Jesuit influence at Holy Cross is one of the reasons that I ended up getting into politics.

[707] Because the Jesuits are very focused on social justice.

[708] And whereas I think a lot of Christianity is focused on.

[709] individual salvation in an afterlife, which is just, you know, be good on earth, feel guilty about things.

[710] Absolutely.

[711] You know, the Jesuits are much more about collective salvation on earth, doing good works here.

[712] And Worcester...

[713] Was that part of the Protestant Reformation?

[714] Do they have a leader of that?

[715] I don't think it was connect...

[716] I don't, I won't know of history, so I'll embarrass myself.

[717] But, and part of it is we went to school in Worcester, and Worcester is sort of this, you know, second biggest city in New England.

[718] It's this post -industrial city.

[719] It's got, you know, poverty and a lot of issues.

[720] And so Holy Cross always encouraged people to go out into the community and do work and organize and volunteer.

[721] And I did that.

[722] And it was that plus the education I was getting at Holy Cross that combined to make me want to go into politics.

[723] Yeah.

[724] So you were the editor of your paper.

[725] You were on the debate team.

[726] You graduated a valedictorian.

[727] Yeah.

[728] In hindsight, was that too much?

[729] It didn't feel like it.

[730] I had a great time of college.

[731] Oh, you did?

[732] Yeah.

[733] Because I read all that stuff and I get scared.

[734] I'm like, when were you drunk?

[735] When were you getting laid?

[736] A lot.

[737] Oh, okay.

[738] A lot.

[739] Okay, good.

[740] Okay.

[741] No, I mean, I had a great time in college just like anyone.

[742] I mean, look, when I look back at Holy Cross now, it is a small school.

[743] I graduate with 700 people.

[744] And, you know, I think when we did our show, we did our show in Michigan in Ann Arbor.

[745] Oh, uh -huh.

[746] And we went to a. Michigan game.

[747] It was Michigan, Michigan State.

[748] Big, big state.

[749] And I had never been to like a real college football game because I went to a fucking Holy Cross.

[750] A bunch of Jesuits sweep in the streets.

[751] When I did things like that, I was like, yeah, maybe I could have gone to a really big fun school.

[752] So fun for Holy Cross, I definitely had.

[753] But I studied really hard, but I enjoyed it.

[754] And I never felt like it like I was too much of a nerd in the library all the time.

[755] Because as someone I have kids, I am always evaluating this.

[756] I weirdly did like terrible.

[757] elementary, pretty good in junior high, good in high school first two years.

[758] That was right on the road.

[759] And I'm like, fuck this.

[760] I'm never doing anything but road tripping.

[761] You just quit.

[762] Then community college, then UCLA.

[763] Then I did really good at UCLA.

[764] But I weirdly am happy about that trajectory because I did so much silly stuff.

[765] And I always try to evaluate like, God, would I want my kids to even get into one of these schools just because what's required of you during high school with the extra curricular activities?

[766] Yeah.

[767] I'm having a real rough time today with my.

[768] pronunciation.

[769] Could you say it for me, Monica?

[770] Curricular.

[771] Curricular.

[772] Curricular.

[773] It seems like you could miss life en route to this other life.

[774] And it concerns me, but you don't feel that way looking back.

[775] I think I could have gone in that direction because when I was younger in high school, I was much more of a student focused on.

[776] I got to study, work hard, something like that.

[777] I think...

[778] Was that being driven by one of your parents or your own internal type anus?

[779] Just my own internal type anus.

[780] I also, like, I wasn't good at sports, so I wanted my thing to be studying and that kind of stuff.

[781] Did you idolize and look up to different intellectuals?

[782] Did you have like heroes?

[783] It wasn't that.

[784] Okay.

[785] You didn't have like a Nome Chomsky.

[786] No, I was just sort of like, I want to do really well in school.

[787] I like school.

[788] I'm good at.

[789] Because did you evaluate like, you know what, adulthood's where I'm going to shine?

[790] Did you have that kind of far -sightedness?

[791] No, it was very in the moment.

[792] Like, I'm just going to do well on this test and I'm going to bring home the A. And that's going to get, you know, then my parents are going to like that.

[793] Yeah.

[794] And people are going to say, oh, he's the smart one.

[795] great.

[796] It was that kind of drive.

[797] You have siblings?

[798] It was competitive too.

[799] Oh, okay.

[800] I have siblings.

[801] Are you the oldest?

[802] I'm the oldest, yeah.

[803] Yeah.

[804] My brother, Andy's three years younger.

[805] Okay, yeah, that tracks out.

[806] Yeah, that's the oldest.

[807] And he more got fucked around and stuff.

[808] He was pretty good.

[809] I mean, he's now.

[810] Oh, he's an actor.

[811] He's an actor.

[812] Yeah.

[813] Yeah.

[814] And so, but by the time I got to college, I had a really good group of friends.

[815] Friends from high school.

[816] And then again, a lot of friends in college.

[817] And, you know, I was a much more social person at that.

[818] point.

[819] And my friends were super important to me. My friends were important to me in high school.

[820] My parents wanted me to go to a private school in high school.

[821] And I got into a few, but I was like, I'm not leaving my friends in public school.

[822] And took my parents credit.

[823] They said, you do what you want.

[824] We want to make sure you have a happy life.

[825] That's great.

[826] So you graduate and then through whatever many roads, you end up on the carry campaign.

[827] Yes.

[828] By the way, I loved John Kerry.

[829] And I always felt like, I felt a deeper sense of injustice about John Kerry than I think any other candidate that I had wanted to win.

[830] Like, even like I had voted for Hillary, but I could very much see, I could understand the critique and I could understand people not liking her and being polarized.

[831] It wasn't beyond me. Yeah.

[832] The John Kerry thing to me was like, this is bullshit.

[833] This guy is so far and away the best candidate.

[834] And because he isn't the fucking guy you want to have a beer with, I was so frustrated with that.

[835] I don't know what the consensus is on why he didn't win, but yeah, he didn't have a game show host person.

[836] And so we didn't pick this person who was so clearly had a lifetime of integrity.

[837] If you've watched the John McCain documentary, it's fantastic.

[838] It is so good.

[839] I know it's going to make me cry.

[840] Yeah.

[841] It's going to be in a heavy.

[842] But again, if you watch it, I think you'll maybe understand some of the points I was bringing up earlier in our conversation, which is like there's people with so much integrity on both sides.

[843] And that's, this just scares me that that's our ability to recognize that is.

[844] is getting a little muted.

[845] But at any rate, those two were on opposite ends.

[846] One guy's a war hero.

[847] And then the other guy was a, what do we call him?

[848] A conscientious objector.

[849] Although he was in.

[850] But also a war hero.

[851] But very against Vietnam.

[852] And then, of course, McCain was.

[853] And then those two came together eventually, right, to get some, to go find all the MIA guys and account for people.

[854] And it's also important to point out there that they came together.

[855] But coming together is not necessarily like, and now we're never going to fight again.

[856] because we agree, like, they went after each other.

[857] Sure.

[858] Like, the statements between McCain and Kerry, like, they would attack each other, stuff like that, but then say, okay, well, this issue we agree on, so we're going to work on it, even as we tear each other to shit on this other issue.

[859] Yes, to me, to me, the role models I would point to it today in our country is I would say Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Scalia, they could not be more opposed ideologically, and their best friends.

[860] They went on vacations together.

[861] And I just feel like, I think we can all be.

[862] friends and have radically different ideologies.

[863] And I'm just nervous about...

[864] It'd be nice to have more friendships with different ideologies.

[865] You should start off -roading.

[866] I'm a big off -roader, and I have a lot of friends who differ in my...

[867] But you started with John Kerry, you were assembling audio clips from public radio and stuff.

[868] Newspaper clips.

[869] I mean, at that point, it was like cutting out a newspaper faxing clips to people, very old school.

[870] But, yeah, I was the palaces and carpal tunnel.

[871] I was the low man on the totem pole.

[872] And then you eventually start writing speeches for John Kerry.

[873] Yeah.

[874] And you are at, I don't know what it was, you were at some democratic event and you saw Obama was about to make a speech.

[875] Yes, I was at the 2004 convention.

[876] My job with the Kerry campaign was to be backstage and make sure that all the candidates were on message.

[877] Right.

[878] And you had discovered that there was some overlap between his speech and John Kerry's.

[879] Someone called to let me know.

[880] Last draft of the Kerry speech that I saw, it did not have any overlap.

[881] But then I went off to Boston and everyone went on the plane with Kerry as they traveled around the country.

[882] And I get a call from the chief speech writer.

[883] And he said, okay, there's the line in Barack Obama's speech that John Kerry wants to use in his.

[884] Now, the Kerry people will say that Kerry had that line.

[885] And, you know, Obama still thinks that maybe not.

[886] Regardless.

[887] It left you in a position.

[888] Yep.

[889] You have to go down the hall and tell him.

[890] And tell Barack that he can't say that line.

[891] And so I'm 21 and I, like, walked down the hall.

[892] and yeah, it wasn't great.

[893] And I went to...

[894] Mr. Obama?

[895] Hi.

[896] I just got out of high school.

[897] I stopped here on my way.

[898] Exactly.

[899] And no one would tell him for me. None of the staffers there.

[900] They were like, you go tell him yourself.

[901] Yeah.

[902] And I went and told him, and he looked down at me and he was like, are you trying to tell me I have to take out my favorite line in the speech?

[903] And I think I, like, lost consciousness for a couple seconds.

[904] It was bad.

[905] Yeah, that's a stressful situation.

[906] That was my first meeting with Obama.

[907] And now describe your, what is it like to have put that?

[908] Because this is the first time in your life you've probably given your entire soul to something and then Carrie loses.

[909] And what is that emotionally like?

[910] It was crushing and I became extremely cynical about politics at that moment.

[911] And I left Washington, drove back home, moved back in with my parents.

[912] And I was like, all right, my parents have been pushing me to go to law school.

[913] maybe I'll finally go to law school because it's like what you said about the frustrations and the injustice of Kerry losing because I'm like this guy you know obviously he could have been you know a better communicator whatever it may be but you know the Bush campaign took him down because of his war service and the man is a war hero a legit war hero he risked his life for his fellow soldiers he came back to speak out against the war and they used the whole thing against him.

[914] And then, so after that, I was like, I don't know if politics is for me, because I think this whole thing is a game and it's bullshit.

[915] Yeah.

[916] And then Robert Gibbs reached out to me. He was Kerry's press secretary, who was, I was his assistant.

[917] He had since left to go work for Obama.

[918] And he said, you know, Obama's never had a speechwriter before he's written all his own speeches.

[919] He wrote his own speech for the 2004 convention, the famous speech.

[920] And he's like, but now that he's a U .S. Senator, he's not going to have time to write every speech on his own.

[921] I'm trying to tell him he needs to learn to work with someone.

[922] He doesn't think it's a great idea because he still wants to write his speeches but why don't, would you be willing to have breakfast with them just to talk about it?

[923] So I said, sure.

[924] It was his first week in the Senate and so we had breakfast in the Senate cafeteria.

[925] He first wanted to know just about my life.

[926] Where'd you grow up?

[927] Where did you go?

[928] Just the questions you were asking me about Holy Cross.

[929] What are your parents like?

[930] All that kind of stuff.

[931] And so we talked about that for a while and we talked about community organizing because we sort of had that in common as well.

[932] And then he asked me about my theory of speech writing.

[933] And I didn't have one.

[934] But I did tell him that when I heard his speech at the convention, I thought what was different about it was that for so long, Democratic politicians and Republican politicians, too, believe that a speech is a collection of soundbites and one -liners and quotes that you're going to get a reporter to pick up.

[935] And he told a story in Boston in that 2004 convention speech.

[936] And he told a story without wondering if like every single line was going to be in a plaz line or every single line.

[937] was going to be like pithy or all that kind of thing.

[938] And he just told the story.

[939] He went with a global.

[940] Go with the global story.

[941] And I think that we need more of that.

[942] And I would, you know, and he's like, well, that's my theory too.

[943] But at that moment, were you critical of the, I mean, because I think to pursue any job, you must almost start with a position of like, I don't like my options here.

[944] Like even if you get into movie making or acting, there's some part of you that's like, I'm not seeing the movie I want to see.

[945] So I want to make the movie I want to see.

[946] So were you at that time?

[947] going, this is bunk and I want it to be this.

[948] I didn't know exactly know what I wanted it to be because I didn't know that it could be that.

[949] Right.

[950] Because I thought that there were all these constraints in politics of what you could get away with.

[951] And so in the Kerry campaign, it was speech by committee in an awful way, right?

[952] There was like four speechwriters.

[953] There was a couple consultants, a couple pollsters.

[954] A lot of cooks.

[955] A lot of cooks.

[956] And it's the worst way to write something to have like 10, 15 people all diving in.

[957] Yeah.

[958] Yeah, exactly.

[959] You know that like the more they send it out to more writers for more drafts, it's going to end up getting worse.

[960] Yeah.

[961] And I thought to myself, like, maybe that's just the way it is in politics and that's where we're going to end up with bad speeches all the time.

[962] Yeah.

[963] Can I ask you a really quick question?

[964] Sure.

[965] Did you see Wild Wild Country?

[966] Yeah.

[967] Okay.

[968] So the first time that Ma 'an Sheila sat with the Bhagwam, she starts bawling.

[969] I did not have that experience.

[970] Okay.

[971] That's what I was curious.

[972] I am not the Ma 'an -Shila.

[973] Okay.

[974] You're not the secretary.

[975] Yeah, at what point do you kind of get infected with who he is in the way that I'm infected with?

[976] It was over Christmas, I read Dreams from My Father before I met with him.

[977] Oh, okay.

[978] Because I hadn't, you know, I heard the 2004 convention speech, which everyone says, that's the moment they fell in love with him.

[979] And I thought it was a great speech and I was inspired like everyone else.

[980] But it wasn't until I read Dreams from my Father that I thought, oh my God, I have to work for this person.

[981] And that was because it was a book that has written so honestly, talks about his drug use.

[982] Snort and co. It talks about everything.

[983] It talks about race in the most real, honest, you know, way possible.

[984] And I read that.

[985] In a vulnerable way.

[986] In a vulnerable way.

[987] And also like his thoughts not fully formed, you know?

[988] Like he has a lot of questions that he's still, that are unanswered.

[989] I thought, this guy thinks he's going to be a U .S. senator.

[990] And he's going to be in national politics.

[991] And this book is out there.

[992] And he talks like this.

[993] And if he can be, like, like he is in this book, even, if he can even be 30 % of what he is in this book, because obviously politics is not going to allow you to be 100 % of what you're, then it's worth trying this out.

[994] Yeah.

[995] And that was when I decided I really needed to work for him.

[996] And how do you let, how do you eventually gain the trust of someone who is such a good writer themselves and most likely a control freak if he's gotten to where he's at?

[997] Yeah.

[998] Is it a slow burn or do you get a crack at something?

[999] and he goes, oh, shit.

[1000] Fabro, this isn't too bad.

[1001] It was a bit of a slow burn.

[1002] He probably out of necessity had to start using it.

[1003] He just had to start using me. But even in that first interview, he said, you know, you seem nice enough.

[1004] I don't think I need a speechwriter.

[1005] But Gibbs tells me I do need a speechwriter, so let's just give this a whirl.

[1006] That was sort of how it worked.

[1007] But part of it was him and how he is.

[1008] This is me in stunt doubles.

[1009] Yeah, right.

[1010] I'm like, I'm going to do everything.

[1011] We'll have you there in case.

[1012] Wait, right, sorry.

[1013] No, I mean, the first, I remember the first time I wrote a speech for him, it was, the first big speech I wrote for him was he was going to, he was going to Georgia for John Lewis's 65th birthday.

[1014] And he was going to speak at John Lewis's his 65th birthday.

[1015] Okay.

[1016] I don't know who John Lewis is.

[1017] John Lewis, Civil Rights Hero, marched with Martin Luther.

[1018] I knew I'd be exposed to be a racist.

[1019] I knew you'd exposed me to be a racist.

[1020] He was on the Letterman, right?

[1021] When Obama went on Letterman?

[1022] No, I don't think so.

[1023] Maybe.

[1024] No, you're a racist.

[1025] Oh, on Letterman, the Netflix show show.

[1026] I'm thinking of Letterman his show show.

[1027] Sorry, the Netflix show.

[1028] You're right.

[1029] You're not a racist.

[1030] Thank God I'm not a racist.

[1031] You know what it was?

[1032] I thought there was a weird part of that letterman show.

[1033] I'm like, why are they now with John Lewis and Selma?

[1034] Bridge and Selma, Civil Rights.

[1035] Okay, right, right, right.

[1036] So he goes down there to give this speech and I'm like, this is a civil rights hero.

[1037] How am I going to write this?

[1038] I write something out.

[1039] Pretty big first swing for you, because it's all race related, I have to imagine.

[1040] They're going to give the white guy.

[1041] White guy from north of Boston.

[1042] So I leave the office and he's like, hey, fabs, I know it's, I know this is your first speech for me. I know that you're probably pretty nervous.

[1043] I just want to let you know I'm a writer too.

[1044] So I know that sometimes the muse strikes and sometimes it doesn't.

[1045] And if you figure it out tonight, great.

[1046] And if you don't come back in here tomorrow and we'll work on it together.

[1047] Oh, wow.

[1048] So I went home.

[1049] I stayed up all night.

[1050] I worked on it.

[1051] I come back.

[1052] He comes over to my, he looks at it, spends, a couple hours with it comes over to my desk has all these edits and he's like I just want to ask you if it's okay if I make all of these edits to the speech.

[1053] I'm like what?

[1054] You're Barack Obama?

[1055] Yeah of course and of course he made a ton of edits to the speech and he rewrote a lot of it and stuff like that because it's our first speech but that's sort of the way that the two of us work together and he was so patient with me and then it was until he gave a speech at Knox College.

[1056] He gave a commencement there almost a year into his first year in office in the Senate.

[1057] And I wrote a lot of that speech.

[1058] He made edits, but I wrote a big chunk of it.

[1059] And after that speech, he was like, this was really good.

[1060] He's like, I feel like you got it.

[1061] Oh, man. And so then we clicked.

[1062] But it's a lot of sitting down with him, spending 20, 30 minutes, figure out what's on his mind, reading every interview transcript he's ever delivered, going to hear him speak.

[1063] I would imagine just logistically, you are probably just out of pure requirement.

[1064] And you end up probably spending as much time with anyone else in his life, right?

[1065] This is a big chunk of his.

[1066] Yeah, especially in the early days in the Senate, in the campaign in OA.

[1067] you're making a new speech every city, right?

[1068] Every city.

[1069] And so it's just constant.

[1070] And I tell politicians and people in politics all the time, the only way to really have a speech right around your staff who is successful at doing the job is to develop a close personal relationship with them because you meet tons of people.

[1071] who are like, oh, I get a speechwriter on staff, but I go through my senior advisor, my communications person, and speech writer is just some person feeding me stuff.

[1072] And that's just never going to work.

[1073] Yeah.

[1074] So when he becomes president, and you know you're now going to be writing speeches that the president's going to be making, I can't imagine you didn't have a sense of history.

[1075] When you think of some of our most well -known phrases come from some of these addresses, right?

[1076] Like Kennedy asked now what your country can do for you, you can do for your country.

[1077] The Eisenhower Military Industrial Complex Warning.

[1078] There's these things that will become Shakespearean for our country.

[1079] And you're going to be crafting some of those things.

[1080] Is the weight of that?

[1081] As a writer, my whole goal is to trick my brain into thinking it is as low pressure as possible so that I can be creative.

[1082] But I just don't know how you do it with your job.

[1083] You try not to think about it.

[1084] Okay.

[1085] Because I think, you know, we spent a lot of time thinking about it around the first inaugural because it's his inaugural address.

[1086] This is our first big cut of history.

[1087] First African American president.

[1088] You think of Kennedy's inaugural.

[1089] All these others are not going through your head.

[1090] And I think because he was so focused on it and I was and the other speechwriters were we almost tried too hard to think to ourselves, what is the line or the phrase that's going to be etched in stone.

[1091] Yeah.

[1092] And I think if you are too focused on that, you can write tight, right?

[1093] Yeah, yeah.

[1094] You don't write as well.

[1095] You lose the emotion and you lose the story.

[1096] Yes.

[1097] And so after that speech, I think we went back to just telling ourselves, let's figure out the story first.

[1098] Even if the communications team and the press team and reporters are like, what's the line?

[1099] Why isn't he quotable?

[1100] Why don't you just write the story and write it in the language.

[1101] Get the emotion right.

[1102] And if someone down the road in history wants to pick out a quote that's their favorite quote to, like, etch on some monument, let them do that.

[1103] But like right now, let's actually figure out how to tell the story.

[1104] But it is a very bizarre, I don't want to fluff your pillows too much, but what a unique position that your words, John Favreau's words, will be in history books and you didn't have to become president to do it.

[1105] It is an interesting, like, shortcut.

[1106] I mean, we said, you know, we've been trained to say his speechwriters and we did when we were in the White House, they're all his words, they're not our words, right, sure.

[1107] But in a. Okay.

[1108] I would hate that.

[1109] I would think, Monica would really flip over that.

[1110] But I think for him more so than almost any other president, they are his words because even if we're writing them, like I don't.

[1111] You're servicing his.

[1112] He's servicing him and I didn't just learn how he writes speeches or how he talks, but I ended up learning how he thinks.

[1113] And you have to really get into the person's mind and how they might respond to something.

[1114] And once you do that, then you start writing things that they probably would have written on their own.

[1115] And he spent so much time with every speech, writing, rewriting.

[1116] Wait, have a real quick question.

[1117] I'm sorry, we're out of time.

[1118] No way.

[1119] Conversely to the carry moment when he lost, what was the feeling of him, of winning?

[1120] One of the top, you know, five moments in life.

[1121] It was, you know, my family was there.

[1122] My friends were there.

[1123] We're sitting in, you know, standing in Grant Park in Chicago.

[1124] And you're just like, the emotion is, it was overwhelming.

[1125] Do you have to check in with your ego during those?

[1126] Are you like monitoring it at any point during that?

[1127] Because for me, that's a, that's more dangerous than bad news.

[1128] I've, I try to, I am fortunate enough to have friends and family, especially friends.

[1129] Yeah.

[1130] Who will help me do that because it's no. We heard.

[1131] It's no big deal to them at all, and they don't care at all.

[1132] It is vital, right?

[1133] They'll mock me ruthlessly, which as they should, so it's fun.

[1134] But you need to have friends like that.

[1135] It's vital.

[1136] I've had friends in this business who have become very popular, and then the people they surround themselves with are not people who point out that they're off the rails.

[1137] And it seems to only end up in one place.

[1138] Right.

[1139] And I fortunately married someone who will always keep me in check.

[1140] Me too.

[1141] Like, anytime I could feel cool, she just goes, yeah, I'm going a TV show too.

[1142] Yeah, yeah, I was on Letterman, too.

[1143] Yeah, whatever, dude.

[1144] Yeah, what are you got to do Kimmel today?

[1145] Okay, cool.

[1146] Like, for me, it's super helpful.

[1147] Yeah.

[1148] Could you just walk me through really quickly?

[1149] How do you break a speech?

[1150] I saw, like, on the campaign trail, sometimes you're working from 5 a .m. to 3 a .m. Yeah.

[1151] And I can only think of how they, like, break stories in a writer's room for a TV show.

[1152] Like, there's these neat techniques, and I just wonder, how do you break a speech?

[1153] And I assume it varies from person to person.

[1154] That's a great question.

[1155] Question.

[1156] You know, I usually stare at a blank screen for like hours at a time and freak out.

[1157] Sure.

[1158] But I have, you know.

[1159] Tell yourself you're terrible.

[1160] It's a mistake you got here.

[1161] Writing is terrible.

[1162] Is it writing terrible?

[1163] It's the worst.

[1164] Yeah, you're always one sentence away from being revealed as a fraud.

[1165] That's exactly right.

[1166] On the campaign, I had a great team.

[1167] So Ben Rhodes, Adam Frankel, Cody Kahn, Sarah Hurwitz.

[1168] It's like we would sit together until two or three in the morning and just go back and forth and talk about like, what are we trying to get at in this speech?

[1169] What is he trying to say?

[1170] Like I always wanted to start with the essential paragraph that the president is trying to communicate here.

[1171] Like, let's start there.

[1172] Let's get there and then build around that as opposed to starting like, you know, 20 ,000 feet.

[1173] And are you doing this thing?

[1174] Again, this is how it's done, at least in television, which is like you're generally going like, Oh, it reminds me of a time I went to visit my grandma and I blah, blah, and this happened.

[1175] Like, it kind of, it almost has to start from a personal place that you can really latch on to that emotion.

[1176] It does.

[1177] So was there that going back and forth?

[1178] Eventually, it doesn't start with the emotion as much for, in politics because it's more like.

[1179] Because it's a sociopaths game?

[1180] No, it's more like you have to make the argument first.

[1181] Okay.

[1182] Because everything in politics is making it.

[1183] We need health care because.

[1184] Right.

[1185] And so what is the argument we're trying to make either for this politics?

[1186] or against this candidate.

[1187] Yes.

[1188] And what is the argument we're making for Barack Obama?

[1189] Why he can fix this, right?

[1190] So it's like problem, solution, why me?

[1191] Right, right.

[1192] And so you're trying to figure that out first.

[1193] And then I think what makes a speech, a good speech and not just a typical politician speech, is to find that emotion.

[1194] And hang it on that.

[1195] Right, exactly.

[1196] And also connect that emotion to history and to the country, right?

[1197] Like you're always, I mean, this goes back to our earlier conversation, Like, you're always trying to find words and phrases and sentences and ideas that sort of have echoes throughout the ideals that the country was founded on because those ideals will bring in the most possible people.

[1198] Sure.

[1199] Right.

[1200] But the margin of error as a consumer of these speeches to me seems so tiny because I hear a lot of politicians go, I was just sitting down with a family in Arkansas.

[1201] Bill and Sam, you know.

[1202] Yeah.

[1203] And I'm like, oh, this is so fucking patronizing.

[1204] I just, it's so, it's such bullshit.

[1205] Because someone told them like, you got to be about people and you've got to like find out of the last three years, everything's like, just got out of a backseat of a car with Phil and Marcy Jacobs from Tennessee and they have a son.

[1206] And it's just like, I don't buy any of that.

[1207] So it's just like being saccharin versus being authentically real.

[1208] That's a tiny little bit of wiggle room.

[1209] It's a tiny bit of wiggle room.

[1210] It also requires you to, as a politician, to.

[1211] have, to be willing to have some courage in what you say and to not be so cautious and worried about it.

[1212] For Obama, we tried, when we told stories about people, we tried to make sure they were stories that were different than like, Susie doesn't have health care and I'm going to give her health care, and here's her story.

[1213] You know, it's like, what's like the next level of Susie's story?

[1214] Yes.

[1215] Right?

[1216] Like, let's find something actually emotional and interesting that people in the country could relate to specificities as opposed to some kind of, you know, real person, Madlib that you do in a political speech.

[1217] Yeah, like an archetype, Joe the plumber or whatever.

[1218] Yeah.

[1219] Is there a speech you're most proud of?

[1220] It's a good question.

[1221] I think, I mean, you gave a great eulogy one time I heard.

[1222] What if that's what his favorite speech was?

[1223] Obama did.

[1224] I think I wrote some eulogies for Obama.

[1225] Oh, my goodness.

[1226] I know.

[1227] That's some heavy lifting.

[1228] I know.

[1229] The, you know, the, you know, the, He gave a speech in Iowa at the Jefferson Jackson dinner in 2007, which was sort of his last chance to catch up to Hillary Clinton in the primary because she was like 10, 15 points ahead.

[1230] And it was only 10 minutes.

[1231] He had to keep it at 10 minutes.

[1232] And that was enormously helpful because it is harder to write a short speech than a long speech, as is true with most writing.

[1233] And we had to boil down the campaign's entire message to these 10 minutes and our case against Hillary Clinton without mentioning Hillary Clinton and being too much of an attack dog there.

[1234] So that was, it was very tricky to pull off, but he didn't.

[1235] He memorized it and, you know, gave it in Iowa, and it was sort of like the beginning of the transformation in the campus.

[1236] Have you had any moments, and you don't have to be specific, but have you had moments where after the fact you were like, ethically, I feel a little compromised by the direction we took there?

[1237] Oh, not really.

[1238] Really?

[1239] Yeah, like, I think it's because I'm a, you know, a student of politics, too, and I get political realities.

[1240] So, like, I think, like, the only issue where I was, or one of the issues where I was in a much different place than he was for a while was gay marriage.

[1241] Yeah.

[1242] You have to be a part of crafting a message that you don't really believe in.

[1243] But I also knew that he kept pushing the issue in the right direction, ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

[1244] I figured he would get there.

[1245] Right.

[1246] And if I felt like he wasn't going to get there, like he was going the other direction, I think I would have had a problem.

[1247] And so while I was at the time working for him and thinking, like, God, I wish he would get there.

[1248] faster, it was, I didn't feel ethically compromised.

[1249] I just felt like, come on, let's get, let's get there.

[1250] Right.

[1251] Oh, yeah, that's a very interesting one.

[1252] So, yeah.

[1253] Yeah.

[1254] So you left.

[1255] Well, I just want to ask a gossipy question really quick.

[1256] Sure.

[1257] How often do you talk to him now?

[1258] Are you guys buds?

[1259] Once in a while.

[1260] Once in a while.

[1261] You ask him to come on the podcast?

[1262] Yeah, next time you talk to him.

[1263] I mean, he was one of our first guests.

[1264] Oh, it was right before he left the White House.

[1265] It was sort of a dark day in the White House.

[1266] Yeah, it was weird.

[1267] But yeah, we talk once in a while.

[1268] He's busy writing his book.

[1269] Okay.

[1270] So, you know, he'll complain about writing.

[1271] He lives in D .C., right?

[1272] He does, he lives in D .C. He's got to be out here, though, right?

[1273] Everyone wants to be out here.

[1274] Yeah, just fundraising for the party.

[1275] You couldn't get here quick enough, could you?

[1276] No, I'll never go back.

[1277] It's rough.

[1278] Once you've had 362 days of sunshine.

[1279] No, we're kidding.

[1280] It's really hard.

[1281] So after you left, you said, which I thought was very appropriate is anything in politics post -Oboma will probably be anti -climactic.

[1282] Yeah.

[1283] And so you both started, which you mentioned a minute ago, you have some kind of consulting.

[1284] Yeah, we did that for a little while.

[1285] You don't do that anymore.

[1286] No. Tommy Vitor and I did that for a little while.

[1287] This was people who just wanted speeches and wanted like narrative messaging help.

[1288] And so it was nonprofits, some few tech companies, celebrities, people like that who just needed a speech.

[1289] Okay.

[1290] And it was like a good way to pass.

[1291] NDAs for all these people.

[1292] I want to know what celebrity speech.

[1293] Yeah, I want to know a celebrity who had a speech for.

[1294] It was good to.

[1295] What if you wrote a speech?

[1296] Oscar speech.

[1297] I had a few people who thought they were going to win Oscars.

[1298] I come to you.

[1299] I worked on there.

[1300] Yeah.

[1301] I worked on a few potential Oscars.

[1302] Yeah.

[1303] And it was just like after three years of it, it was relaxing because we didn't work as hard.

[1304] And you know, you make money.

[1305] But I was like this sucks.

[1306] Yeah.

[1307] It wasn't for you.

[1308] It just wasn't for me. Well, it's kind of like I had a buddy who's a Navy SEAL and he was many times approached by Blackwater.

[1309] Yeah.

[1310] To go over as a paid soldier.

[1311] Yeah.

[1312] And he said as corny as this sounds, I don't think the things you end up having to do, the things he had had to do as a seal, you have to believe in something a little higher than money.

[1313] Like, ultimately, you're going to have to do some shit that you really are going to have to buy into the notion of country.

[1314] And so he just felt like it couldn't be done.

[1315] He couldn't actually do the job he knew how to do without that.

[1316] That's right.

[1317] And so I would imagine as a speechwriter it could be that same principle yeah that's interesting so you start pod saves america pod save america no pod saves america you got that wrong you think after 18 months of doing it you would uh could work out either way pod save and not pod saves it's supposed to be like god save america oh god save america okay oh i see you've done pod and got i had gotten that part of the process the naming process was something but in pod we trust we can do all the god ones yeah we could do that too kill them all let pod sort them out Pod, damn it.

[1318] Are you there, Pod?

[1319] It's me, Margaret.

[1320] Oh, my God, that's actually great.

[1321] Someone should do that.

[1322] Yeah, Margaret should do that.

[1323] But you start Pod Save America in 2017.

[1324] I can't imagine you had the aspirations that you've since achieved.

[1325] There's no way you thought you would be such a phenom, right?

[1326] No idea at all.

[1327] We thought this was a good way to help, to do our part to help people get through the Trump.

[1328] era.

[1329] And we had done a podcast during the 2016 campaign, keeping it 1600 with Bill Simmons at the ringer.

[1330] And that was just us talking about politics.

[1331] Like we talk about it with each other.

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] You know, it's like the same as our text chain about politics.

[1334] Yeah.

[1335] And we had no idea.

[1336] I'm sure the same as you, like what it, what it took to do a podcast.

[1337] Sure.

[1338] And then we decided to, we wanted to launch a bunch of other podcasts.

[1339] Yeah, you have a network called Crooked.

[1340] Crooked media, yeah.

[1341] And we decided to, Yeah, and we want to keep launching podcasts because we want to sort of expand the offerings beyond the four of us since, you know, just four of us and we're pretty sane.

[1342] Yeah.

[1343] And so how many podcasts do you have on this platform?

[1344] 10 podcasts now.

[1345] 10.

[1346] Yeah.

[1347] And how active can you be in that?

[1348] Or do you just, or you're not?

[1349] Like me personally and all the time.

[1350] Yeah.

[1351] Well, we have, I mean, we now have 20 something people at Cricket Media.

[1352] Oh, wow.

[1353] So we have a bunch of producers and we have a development team.

[1354] It works to develop all these podcasts.

[1355] And, you know, we're making sure, when I say we, me and John Lovett and Tommy Vitor, that like wearing all these meetings and trying to help get these pods off the ground.

[1356] But it's our team.

[1357] You know, we have a fantastic team.

[1358] I think the coolest part of it is like sort of building a team, like hiring people and having this whole company.

[1359] With ZipRecruiter?

[1360] What's that?

[1361] With ZipRecruiter.

[1362] Yeah, there you go.

[1363] Free ad ZipRecruiter.

[1364] No, it's like one day you look around and you're like, look at this whole crew.

[1365] Yeah.

[1366] We're all doing the same thing.

[1367] and it's it's it now that scares the fuck out of me to be honest you're looking at everyone in armchairs the whole existence and then my sister a little bit but that doesn't scare you the whole no not real i don't i don't try to let it scare me i mean for me because i've spent so much my life on campaigns it our company is a little different we're not like a traditional company and so it feels more like a campaign which is this sort of camaraderie you have with the people who are um in a mission together with you yeah and a bit a bit of functioning chaos yeah like You're comfortable and probably.

[1368] Oh, for sure.

[1369] Yeah.

[1370] And we still, you know, I work still less than I did on like the height of the campaign in the White House.

[1371] Sure.

[1372] Well, you'll probably never work that hard.

[1373] I hope for you and your, in your wife, Emily.

[1374] So tell me about touring.

[1375] How long ago did you guys start touring?

[1376] It started about a year ago.

[1377] And we just decided we wanted to get out of the studio into the road.

[1378] And it's been probably one of the best parts of the whole company because, you know, podcasting and like listening to podcasts is a sort of, it can be a lonely experience.

[1379] Yes.

[1380] And when you get to go out.

[1381] Yeah, it's a little isolating.

[1382] And when you get to go out and see all of these people, um, who've all heard the podcast and they make friends with each other and they're part of a community together.

[1383] And it's inspiring.

[1384] We're just starting to taste that.

[1385] We did our first live show a couple weeks ago.

[1386] Oh, cool.

[1387] We're going to Texas and doing two in August.

[1388] But yeah, the, the notion that these people that all came together, which still blows my mind, and they all have this, uh, unifying interest.

[1389] It's really like life affirming, isn't it?

[1390] It actually makes you feel fantastic to be a part of.

[1391] Yeah.

[1392] Well, and it's also like a lot of people were like, well, the left is angry, like the right is angry and everyone's angry all the time.

[1393] And the audience at our shows could not be more different than like a Trump rally.

[1394] You know, like people aren't there like screaming about Trump and angry and stuff like that.

[1395] People are inspired.

[1396] They're hopeful.

[1397] They want to figure out how to get involved.

[1398] And so it's really, it's a one, it's a one.

[1399] thing to be able to go.

[1400] A joy is.

[1401] It's a joy.

[1402] Yeah.

[1403] It is a joy.

[1404] And you get people who like, it's one woman, you know, we were in Denver and she's like, I am an undocumented immigrant.

[1405] I'm a dreamer.

[1406] I drove all the way here from Utah because I want, you know, I wanted to thank everyone here for standing up.

[1407] Yeah.

[1408] And he's like, and what I really want to know is like, do we have a chance in the Utah third?

[1409] This really specific political question.

[1410] But at that moment, like, you know, everyone gets up and cheers for her.

[1411] And it's just like sort of wonderful moment.

[1412] And so it's a people who.

[1413] have this mix of like they're politically nerdy and they want to know what's going on but they also want to figure out how to help yeah that's nice it's really cool and don't you find is like um uh things zigzag so much so it's like we all went to movies then that kind of stuff now and then we were all watching Netflix and then everything's on a phone and now it's podcast so it just seems to be getting more and more isolating in a weird way yeah yet the the crave then for the shared experience going to see it live and then so then that blows up so it's It's like right when you think, oh, humanity's doomed and we're all heading into these more and more isolated states, it ironically gives rise to this very shared experience that didn't exist 15 years ago.

[1414] So it's like it all kind of ebbs and flows and there's some kind of subtle positivity you see.

[1415] Yeah.

[1416] And I think it's a necessary experience because politics can't be done unless we're doing it together.

[1417] Right.

[1418] Unless you do it face to face, no matter how much technology, you know, promises to like, allow us all to have Twitter wars ourselves and, you know, do all kinds of electronic shit.

[1419] Like, it is important to be together in community organizing.

[1420] Like, that is the only way real change actually happens.

[1421] Like, I get to be on stage with some of my best friends and some of the smartest people I know.

[1422] Yeah.

[1423] And we get to shoot the shit about politics for an hour and then answer a bunch of questions.

[1424] And I can't imagine anything better than that.

[1425] And do you think that's the primary gift of all this is that you've found a way into an occupation where you're actually surrounding yourself, like your co -workers are a blessing.

[1426] Oh, yeah.

[1427] That's the most important thing about work, right?

[1428] Like, especially if your work is something that you love, being able to surround yourself with people who also love that work.

[1429] Yeah.

[1430] And then you have that kind of connection.

[1431] That's a gift that I don't know a lot of, you know, if you can get that, then you've figured it out.

[1432] Did you see idiocracy?

[1433] I still haven't seen idiocry.

[1434] I feel like I know the entire movie because everyone's, Sure, sure.

[1435] Talked about it so much.

[1436] In a nutshell, we need you to reproduce on behalf of all of us.

[1437] Or John Favro could, too.

[1438] He has already three times, thrice over.

[1439] Perfect.

[1440] Last thing I want to tell you before you go is that when I said to my wife, I was walking out the door, and she goes, where are you going?

[1441] I go, I've got to do an armchair.

[1442] And she goes, oh, who are you talking to?

[1443] And I go, John Favro.

[1444] And she goes, oh, cool.

[1445] Thomas said hi.

[1446] And I go, oh, you've met John Favro?

[1447] And she goes, oh, not that.

[1448] Oh, my God.

[1449] What?

[1450] Speech writer John Favro?

[1451] And I go, yeah.

[1452] And she was, you didn't tell me?

[1453] She lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.

[1454] She had to change your pants, I think.

[1455] She said, will you tell him he is so cute?

[1456] Oh, my gosh.

[1457] After he left, there was a lot of discussion with the...

[1458] Oh, there was even more.

[1459] With the girls in the house, yeah.

[1460] Yeah.

[1461] I mean, I don't know that I've seen this reaction.

[1462] Do you know you're a heartthrob?

[1463] Like a sex symbol?

[1464] No. Well, I'm a huge fan.

[1465] of your wife as well.

[1466] I think you guys should go get drinks.

[1467] Favorite television shows.

[1468] Forgetting Sarah Marshall, favorite movies of all times.

[1469] Yeah, but you didn't see it to your Xtreen.

[1470] Okay, great, great, great, right.

[1471] Look, you guys go have drinks.

[1472] I'm sure Emily's a great gal.

[1473] She and I could go to a sizzler, attack that.

[1474] Emily's a huge fan of parenthood.

[1475] There we go.

[1476] Watch every episode, every season.

[1477] This seems like a swinging episode designed in heaven.

[1478] I mean, look at the symbiosis here.

[1479] Well, John Favreau, thank you so much for coming.

[1480] by one of our smarter guests that we've had and it was a pleasure to hear your brilliant mind at work awesome thank you and now begins my favorite part of the show fact check with monica she's a fact check expert oh my voice my upper register's not there clear it out clear it out it clear it out like baba booie would I don't think I can go that high she's an She's a fact check expert.

[1481] Yeah.

[1482] She's a fact check expert.

[1483] Do do do.

[1484] She's a fact check expert.

[1485] Oh, yeah.

[1486] You did it.

[1487] I did it, ish.

[1488] I liked it.

[1489] All right.

[1490] I always like it.

[1491] Fact check my ass.

[1492] There aren't that many facts.

[1493] Well, it's a problem when you have an actual expert on.

[1494] There's probably very few things to correct, huh?

[1495] Yeah.

[1496] Surely I must have stepped in shit once or twice.

[1497] Once or twice.

[1498] but not very else.

[1499] I think context is relevant.

[1500] This is Monica's first time out of her apartment.

[1501] Yeah.

[1502] Since I believe Friday, right?

[1503] You, you, no, no. Saturday you dropped your vehicle off.

[1504] Then you went home and you haven't been out of the house since.

[1505] Yeah.

[1506] So that's four days.

[1507] And it wasn't like a religious exploration.

[1508] It wasn't a vision quest.

[1509] No, it was a illness, right?

[1510] Yeah, I've been sick.

[1511] Throat, nose, chest.

[1512] Bottom.

[1513] Not bottom.

[1514] Don't talk about my bottom on here.

[1515] I thought you were about to say bottom.

[1516] Body.

[1517] Yeah, well.

[1518] Full body.

[1519] It would have made sense that there was also some bottom disturbances with a with a virus of this magnitude because it really kicked your ass.

[1520] Yeah.

[1521] I'm not 100%.

[1522] No. So this one's going to suck just a heads up just to get your expectations, right?

[1523] But she's here and we are grateful to her for that.

[1524] So thank you, Monica, for showing up to work even when you're sick.

[1525] And let this be a lesson of people who are fucking lazy.

[1526] Take it away.

[1527] Yeah.

[1528] Get out of here.

[1529] Lazy bums.

[1530] All right.

[1531] Well, so he mentioned Save the Cat in passing.

[1532] Save the Cat is a very, very famous.

[1533] Some would say infamous.

[1534] Hollywood screenwriting.

[1535] book and have you heard of it?

[1536] I have heard of it.

[1537] I have heard of it.

[1538] I've never read it.

[1539] I have, but when you say infamous, isn't there an implication of nefariousness?

[1540] Yeah, I was kidding.

[1541] Okay.

[1542] But, yes, except I think there is some criticism that like, who is this?

[1543] He's written a few screenplays, but not.

[1544] None that were produced or being legendary.

[1545] No, no, no. I think he wrote blank check.

[1546] He did write some real movies.

[1547] Okay.

[1548] But I think there's some criticism.

[1549] of like, how this person isn't like.

[1550] Right.

[1551] Lawrence Kasden.

[1552] Thank you.

[1553] Great scribe.

[1554] Exactly.

[1555] He has this thing in the book called the beat sheet, which breaks down the three -act structure into like these manageable sections and sort of breaks down exactly what needs to happen in each part.

[1556] Did you like the architecture, the physical parameters of each act?

[1557] Exactly.

[1558] That sounds helpful.

[1559] It is.

[1560] And it's called Save the Cat.

[1561] because he says there's a decisive moment when the protagonist does something nice, like literally saving a cat.

[1562] And he says it's the scene where we first meet the hero in order to gain audience's favor and support for the main character right from the start.

[1563] Have you read this book?

[1564] Yes, I read it when I first moved here, of course.

[1565] It's something a lot of people do when they first move here.

[1566] Is Reed Save the Cat?

[1567] Yeah.

[1568] Now, I'm split.

[1569] I'm of two opinions about this.

[1570] So certainly, like our good friend, Jess, who sang Pippie Longstrump, he would be the first to admit that he wasn't the strongest improver, improviser at the ground lanes when we were there.

[1571] I really like that you call it impover.

[1572] Yeah, I think of it as its own word.

[1573] But he would say he wasn't the strongest impover.

[1574] And yet, by God, did he know how to teach it?

[1575] Like I sat in on one of his classes and he really knew the rules inside now.

[1576] So he was actually quite good at instructing people on how to do improv.

[1577] Yeah.

[1578] Just wasn't his, you know, strongest skill set.

[1579] Right.

[1580] And yet at the same time, so in that scenario, I go, well, you don't have to be able to do the thing to be able to teach the thing.

[1581] Right.

[1582] But yet I get really angry when I watch guys on the sidelines at sporting events.

[1583] Okay.

[1584] Like yelling and ridiculing these athletes.

[1585] And they themselves couldn't take like six flights of stairs without a cardiac arrest.

[1586] that triggers me for some reason.

[1587] I think how dare you, you know, spout your expertise about their chosen sport when you yourself couldn't juggle a fucking fruit basket.

[1588] You know, why does that bother me?

[1589] And the other thing does that.

[1590] I never knew that about you.

[1591] And I like learning things about you.

[1592] Sure.

[1593] And I like that.

[1594] I like that you don't like that.

[1595] I don't like that either.

[1596] You're right.

[1597] What are they doing?

[1598] I'm agitated by it.

[1599] that.

[1600] Unless they can do it better, I think they need to shut the fuck up.

[1601] I agree.

[1602] Yeah, I agree.

[1603] Although, occasionally I find myself guilty of it.

[1604] I think, why did they choose rain tires in the MotoGP race when I can see the clouds are going to pass?

[1605] Can't they see it?

[1606] So I become a little bit of an expert myself.

[1607] But you know about that stuff.

[1608] And I guess if these people like know about football.

[1609] They could know more about football than even the players.

[1610] I guess it's conceivable.

[1611] They could know more.

[1612] They could.

[1613] The history of the game, the many plays that are out there, patterns that are run.

[1614] They could be like an NFL historian, yet they just can't do it.

[1615] Maybe one out of all of those people who are doing it might have that amount of knowledge, but most of them don't.

[1616] Right.

[1617] But you do have that knowledge when you're watching MotoGP.

[1618] MotoGP.

[1619] By the way, if you don't watch MotoGP, it is a ballet on TV.

[1620] two wheels.

[1621] It really is elegant, isn't it?

[1622] I think I've forced you to watch a good 10 minutes of it.

[1623] It's not the worst thing I've watched.

[1624] Right.

[1625] And when you think of motorsports, you're probably like, that's the worst thing I could watch.

[1626] Oh, God.

[1627] Yeah.

[1628] I remember when I was younger, my dad would watch NASCAR.

[1629] Your dad watched NASCAR.

[1630] Yeah.

[1631] And I just.

[1632] A shook.

[1633] I'm getting really close.

[1634] You are.

[1635] You are.

[1636] You are.

[1637] A shock.

[1638] Every swing I get closer to the ball.

[1639] He watched NASCAR.

[1640] Yeah.

[1641] Oh, man, I love this guy.

[1642] I really do.

[1643] Anyway, I hated it.

[1644] Okay.

[1645] Well, it made me feel disgusting inside.

[1646] Oh, wow.

[1647] So.

[1648] Okay.

[1649] But the MotoGP is okay.

[1650] Yeah.

[1651] Well, it's Euro.

[1652] So right there, we've got your interest piqued a little bit because it's all European riders.

[1653] That's what you'd think, but I'm not, I'm not, um.

[1654] Europhile?

[1655] Mm -mm.

[1656] Okay.

[1657] Back to your bottom illness.

[1658] What was happening with your bottom?

[1659] Stop talking about my bottom.

[1660] You're never going to know.

[1661] So we were wondering if there's a genealogical connection between these Favros.

[1662] Oh, right.

[1663] I didn't look into it.

[1664] But I was thinking that maybe they could contact 23 and me and they could figure it out.

[1665] Find that out.

[1666] Yeah.

[1667] Because I think.

[1668] Or they could go on that show.

[1669] Isn't there a show?

[1670] Or everyone finds out there.

[1671] They were slave owners.

[1672] Yeah.

[1673] That seems to be the recurrent.

[1674] theme on that show.

[1675] Yeah, exactly.

[1676] The show should be called, find out which family member was a slave owner.

[1677] Yeah, exactly.

[1678] On PBS this fall.

[1679] Yeah, because they might be related for real.

[1680] And what if he's like his son?

[1681] Yeah.

[1682] Yeah, yeah.

[1683] Yeah, maybe John, the filmmaker, made someone pregnant when he was very young.

[1684] 12 or 13.

[1685] Yeah, 10 or 10 or 10 or.

[1686] So, I think he's, he was younger than me, right?

[1687] John Favreau that just came in.

[1688] I think he was 40.

[1689] I'm 43 and I think Favro is 53.

[1690] Or maybe he's younger than that.

[1691] I don't know.

[1692] I can't tell because we're in Hollywood.

[1693] Someone could be 70.

[1694] Let's look it up.

[1695] I think he's, this is my guess.

[1696] We play this game a lot and I like this game.

[1697] Oh, right.

[1698] This is a fun game, you guys.

[1699] When Jess and Monica and I watch a show, we start guessing how old the actors are.

[1700] And then one person Googles all these ages.

[1701] And then that'll bring up other people.

[1702] people's ages so then you just start going how old sir anthony hopkins yeah and then whoever's closest wins they win nothing but pride pride yeah um okay my guess is that he's 35 okay I'm gonna guess he's 39 okay 37 I said that a second ago I don't know why I changed my answer I was gonna say 36 too and I changed my answer they teach you in test taking classes to go with your first.

[1703] Follow your instinct.

[1704] That's right.

[1705] Follow the kitten.

[1706] Is that the name of the book?

[1707] Save the cat.

[1708] Save the cat.

[1709] Anyway, yeah, he could have had him at a very young age.

[1710] Tiny bit more context.

[1711] I'm shirtless.

[1712] Don't you think that's relevant?

[1713] Like Rob is, I don't know, he's, I don't know why Rob is being so discreet.

[1714] But Rob is keeping his shirt on.

[1715] It's in the hot.

[1716] 90s inside the attic.

[1717] Yeah.

[1718] I just can't do it.

[1719] I can't, I can't be agile mentally and near, nearing passing out.

[1720] So I had to drop the top.

[1721] Yeah.

[1722] It's good for people to know that.

[1723] I'm so glad that we don't have an HR department at Armchair expert.

[1724] It would not.

[1725] No, I'd be probably getting spoken too often.

[1726] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1727] But I asked, I asked for your consent before I did it.

[1728] And I asked Robbs.

[1729] Well, actually, that wouldn't even.

[1730] You didn't.

[1731] That doesn't really hold water.

[1732] Because, like, if your boss asks you, I mean, you could argue I'm your boss in some way.

[1733] Yeah.

[1734] That, and if your boss asks you, hey, can I take my shirt off?

[1735] It is probably a hard asking.

[1736] Yeah.

[1737] Yes, because I almost feel like then you're asking them to be complicit in others, weird stuff.

[1738] Or, and then they are in a position where they have to decide, like, oh, if I say yes.

[1739] I won't get that promotion.

[1740] Or if I say no, then I might get fired or.

[1741] Yeah.

[1742] Well, just thank God.

[1743] We're best friends, and that's not an issue, you know.

[1744] And we haven't ruled out that I'm not going to take my shirt off at some point.

[1745] Yeah, that's right.

[1746] That hasn't been decided.

[1747] TBD on that.

[1748] Okay.

[1749] So you, oh, you said Kristen got some legislation passed regarding Coney, but it sounded like you said Comey.

[1750] And I wanted people to know she has nothing to do with like Comey and the investigation or anything.

[1751] And this was about six years ago.

[1752] Invisible children.

[1753] For Joseph Coney, the leader of the, oh, I know.

[1754] It's got a really misleading name.

[1755] Like the happy friends.

[1756] IRL.

[1757] Like it has something to do with religion.

[1758] Of course, he's not very Christian.

[1759] Like, I think it has the name Christian in it or something.

[1760] Let's see.

[1761] IRC.

[1762] Yeah, Lord's Resistance Army, the LRA.

[1763] And he's using the word Lord probably liberally.

[1764] Someone are you too liberally?

[1765] because he's a fucking monster.

[1766] Oh, well, I wanted to just pipe in my opinion on something here.

[1767] Okay.

[1768] I had to be a little quiet.

[1769] I mean, I didn't have to, but I kind of chose to in this episode because we only had him for such a short period of time.

[1770] Very busy man. Well, yeah, he left us to go talk to some Parkland kids.

[1771] Right.

[1772] Is that my phone?

[1773] You know, it could be mine because I was nervous that me and Gene Green was going to call for the fitting.

[1774] Gene Cordell?

[1775] I wish.

[1776] What if Gene Cordell was my personal stylist?

[1777] How excited would you be?

[1778] I love him.

[1779] You love him so much.

[1780] Yep.

[1781] It's enough about Gene Cordell.

[1782] Me and Jean.

[1783] I kind of want to explain it, but I also don't because.

[1784] Well, yeah, in a nutshell, my mind.

[1785] Monica thinks Gene Cordell is the funniest human being on Planned Earth.

[1786] And she loves to kind of taunt me with that.

[1787] She'll go on these tirades about just how revolutionary his comedy is.

[1788] And I am always feeling like it's in direct comparison to my own comedy.

[1789] That's not what happened at all.

[1790] And you of all people should not feel like because I gave a compliment to somebody else that it diminishes from you.

[1791] True.

[1792] It's like your motto for me all the time.

[1793] It is.

[1794] It is.

[1795] I need to give some better context.

[1796] And I am going to say it because people can, I want people to know about him.

[1797] Okay, great.

[1798] His name is not Jean Cordell.

[1799] It's Eugene Cordero.

[1800] Same name.

[1801] No. And what happened is one time you asked me, or maybe Kristen asked me and you were in the kitchen.

[1802] He was on Kristen's show, right?

[1803] That's how it all started.

[1804] But no, she asked me like, who are your favorite performers at UCB?

[1805] Okay.

[1806] And I said, Eugene Cordero.

[1807] And she said, and he, I really hope.

[1808] It's so transparent what you're doing.

[1809] It is transparent.

[1810] And mostly I need to say as a disclaimer, I hope that if Gene, by some miracle, heard any of this, that he knows I actually love him.

[1811] But I'm just playing a role in our friendship where I hate as gods.

[1812] So just let that be stated.

[1813] Let that be known.

[1814] Entered into the record.

[1815] Well, because I said Eugene Cordero and then she said, Oh, I love Eugene.

[1816] Oh, she had to change her pants.

[1817] Yeah, exactly.

[1818] There was a lot of pants changing.

[1819] Yeah, she said, oh, I love Eugene.

[1820] He was on House of Wives and the Good Place.

[1821] And he's currently on The Good Place, too.

[1822] He's a recurring character on that.

[1823] Yeah, sounds like he's gunning for my lady is what it sounds like.

[1824] Maybe.

[1825] He's happily married with a child, okay?

[1826] Okay.

[1827] Anyway.

[1828] You think he's perfect.

[1829] I do.

[1830] So that's how this.

[1831] And you said, oh.

[1832] Gene Cordell.

[1833] The funniest guy ever.

[1834] Mean Gene.

[1835] Yeah, it was just my jealousy that my two wives were like getting giddy over the brilliance of someone else.

[1836] He's incredibly funny and you should check him out at UCB.

[1837] Yes, he's wonderful.

[1838] He's the best improv teacher I've ever had.

[1839] Okay.

[1840] Enough about fucking Gene.

[1841] I get it.

[1842] The guy's perfect.

[1843] If he and Fabro could have a child, you would ascend.

[1844] I didn't even send to heaven immediately just by witnessing the creature.

[1845] Get the fuck hot.

[1846] Mean Gene was in Rome.

[1847] Rob just told us he was in when in Rome.

[1848] Oh my God, he is circling, my bride.

[1849] He was in Rome.

[1850] He went to Rome and was in Rome and was in Rome.

[1851] No, no, no, no, no. Very few cast members made the trip to Rome.

[1852] Most of it was shot in New York.

[1853] Oh.

[1854] Yeah.

[1855] Oh, he must have been living in New York at the time and went in doing UCB in New York before I moved out here.

[1856] Oh, you've got it all figured out.

[1857] I actually do know him.

[1858] So this is a little strange.

[1859] Okay, it is, right?

[1860] He was my teacher.

[1861] You know how I feel about teachers.

[1862] Yeah, you tend to be attracted to them.

[1863] I do.

[1864] Anywho.

[1865] So, oh, what I was going to, oh, sorry.

[1866] We really got off track.

[1867] Wow.

[1868] I really got out track because of my sickness.

[1869] You said that, like, you know, basically Trump does something bizarre every day.

[1870] And then we're just like in the.

[1871] cycle of talking about it and we get sucked in and it's like okay we get it we get it like we don't like him right and i agree with all that because it can be it can be like a life suck to get just like circling the drain on that but i do think it's a little a little potentially dangerous to say like just stay away because if everyone just stayed away and wasn't informed as to what he was doing.

[1872] Maybe there would be no attention to this border family separation and all the crazy, crazy shit that's happening.

[1873] You do need people talking about that to cause change and it is working.

[1874] Okay.

[1875] But the border separation is an issue.

[1876] Yeah.

[1877] And any issue that has a solution should be focused on.

[1878] But him being vile, in your opinion, there's nothing to fix.

[1879] In about 90 % of the stuff I'm hearing in my silo of liberals isn't really about something that they're going to change.

[1880] Also, what are those people actually doing?

[1881] Now, some people have hosted lemonade stands around L .A. to send money to the defense fund for those families, which is great.

[1882] That is a productive thing that you can do.

[1883] Also calling your congressman and writing letters and all of those things.

[1884] Yes.

[1885] Putting pressure on your legislation, that is real and it does work.

[1886] Yes, but I guess I'm asking for your honest evaluation of what percentage of people who are talking about this stuff are doing any action.

[1887] I don't know.

[1888] I really don't know.

[1889] But you're optimistic that it's high?

[1890] Well, we've seen some small changes happen as a result of loud screaming about some of this stuff.

[1891] Uh -huh.

[1892] So I can't say that it's bad.

[1893] But again, I'm pro.

[1894] I am pro -protest.

[1895] Yeah.

[1896] Let me be very clear about that.

[1897] I'm very pro -protest.

[1898] I'm very in favor of you contacting your senator or whatever.

[1899] Right, right, right.

[1900] You spending a couple hours of your day with your friends talking about the state of affairs, I don't see as productive.

[1901] And also, I would argue, from an anthropological standpoint, we have all these mechanisms that have evolved in us as a species.

[1902] to help curb tyrannical rule.

[1903] And one of those is, in hunting and gathering societies, which we've been for most of the time we've been on planet Earth, they're very egalitarian.

[1904] And the reason they're very egalitarian is because generally if one dude is tyrannical, several of the other dudes can overthrow that guy.

[1905] It's very hard to have a very strong grasp of power over a group of 100 people if you don't have nuclear arms and you don't have mechanized, war.

[1906] So gossip in general is something that is innate to us.

[1907] Yeah.

[1908] And it's tastier.

[1909] It's much tastier than positive statements because it's the mechanism by which we all go, hey, George is getting a little too big for his britches.

[1910] I think he needs his power regulated.

[1911] Right.

[1912] You know, so it serves a very pragmatic function in a group of 100 humans.

[1913] And that's why it's so tasty.

[1914] I'm just asking people to recognize that this tasty thing is a little bit vestigial in what you're doing in the society is voting.

[1915] That's what you really are doing to enact change unless you're a protester.

[1916] But I just, I would argue more than 90 % of people in the country aren't involved in protests.

[1917] Well, it's, but it's, yeah, protests and also, but it is spreading the word so that the vote changes.

[1918] But do you believe that.

[1919] But do you believe that any of the liberal cries about what a jerk they think he is or exposing the grabbed by the pussy tape?

[1920] Do you think that is swayed a single Trump supporter away from Trump?

[1921] I'm of the opinion it doesn't.

[1922] I don't think they've won anyone over to their side of the aisle by.

[1923] Well, I don't know.

[1924] But I thought it was really interesting when he said that, you know, he was in Detroit and he was in somewhere else in Canada.

[1925] remember where he was, that when he talked to Obama Trump voters and how they all are regretful of that decision.

[1926] And I do think that's important.

[1927] You do have to make people aware of the reality of what's going on versus what he's maybe saying is going on.

[1928] Like people are voting.

[1929] So many people voted for him that totally voted.

[1930] completely against their own needs because they weren't informed.

[1931] So it is important to...

[1932] Well, to say they weren't informed, I think, is doing the thing that our friend Sam does when he says, you're confused on what my point is.

[1933] Well, no, because there's, there were people where they asked that, that didn't know the Affordable Care Act was Obama care.

[1934] And then they were on it.

[1935] They were on the Affordable Care Act and they liked that, but they were against Obamacare.

[1936] Right.

[1937] That's not being informed.

[1938] Right, right.

[1939] I'm talking more about Trump.

[1940] But I'm not.

[1941] I'm talking about people voting.

[1942] People need to know what their life is about.

[1943] They need to know what they're voting for.

[1944] They need to know about their health care and their.

[1945] Yeah, I think people should be informed.

[1946] I do.

[1947] Yeah.

[1948] I just don't think people should talk about politics for two hours a day.

[1949] because I don't think their life is really about politics.

[1950] I think their life is about earning a living, being a parent, being a brother, a sister, all these things.

[1951] Your actions in life, if you measure a human being by their actions and not what they think about, then I think it becomes very clear that there's not a lot of action surrounding people's political opinions.

[1952] It's just them thinking about it.

[1953] And there's really nothing pragmatic happening.

[1954] Well, I don't know that that's true because I think your our actions, again, sort of like he said, our actions are not limited by politics because we're incredibly lucky.

[1955] But a lot of people's life, their day -to -day actions are designated and limited by whatever's happening in our political realm.

[1956] Here's what I know.

[1957] I go to pick the kids up at a birthday party that's for the preschool.

[1958] All the parents are liberal.

[1959] Every conversation for the three hours at that party is about what a turd Trump is.

[1960] Yeah.

[1961] And I don't see any productivity to that.

[1962] Were they convincing me of something?

[1963] No. Are they convincing each other of something?

[1964] No. Are they informing one another about anything?

[1965] Absolutely not.

[1966] They're just commiserating about something they don't like.

[1967] Yeah.

[1968] And I think that's a complete waste of time.

[1969] And I'd way rather go to that party and hear somebody talk about something they love.

[1970] oh, I went to this concert, you should check it out.

[1971] Are you listening to this podcast is fun?

[1972] Like, you know, all these different things that we could bond over that we love that could then lead to more experience in life.

[1973] That, to me, is of value in, you know, just railing on politics all hours of the day at kids' birthdays parties, I think is a little...

[1974] Sure.

[1975] Cesspool -y.

[1976] Yeah.

[1977] Oh, okay.

[1978] So you said our bloodiest and deadliest war was the war against the war against.

[1979] ourselves with the Civil War, which that is the deadliest war for American lives.

[1980] Yeah.

[1981] But the World War II was by far the deadliest war that we've had.

[1982] What's that like 18 million, 16 million, something like that?

[1983] It was 56 .4 million.

[1984] Holy fuck.

[1985] Yeah.

[1986] It's a lot of people.

[1987] Yeah.

[1988] That's rough.

[1989] Mm -hmm.

[1990] So you mentioned Stephen Pinker.

[1991] And his book that you're referring to is, is called Better Angels of Our Nature, and it is about how we are getting better as a society.

[1992] And even though there's like the opinion that everything's getting worse and things are bad, but it sort of tracks all of this over time and says sort of how things are getting better.

[1993] And he has a new ish book called Enlightenment Now.

[1994] That's the one I'm reading.

[1995] Yeah.

[1996] We hope to have him on.

[1997] He's incredible.

[1998] Yeah.

[1999] Stephen, you should come on.

[2000] Yeah.

[2001] If you're with Gene Cordell, you guys stop listening and get on this podcast.

[2002] Okay, so I asked my friends, Anthony and Allison, if there was a term for Christians who just go to church on Christmas and Easter.

[2003] Because you said you thought maybe there was a term for that.

[2004] And I was like, yeah, there's got to be a term for that.

[2005] And they said they've heard C &E's.

[2006] Christmas and Easter.

[2007] Yeah.

[2008] Okay.

[2009] And also cheesters.

[2010] And I was so disappointed by these just so obvious words.

[2011] Uh -huh.

[2012] You wanted something a little.

[2013] Clever.

[2014] Right.

[2015] Right.

[2016] Sorry about that.

[2017] Yeah.

[2018] Maybe you should get to thinking of something real clever and you could coin it and then you could print t -shirts up.

[2019] And I could make a lot of money off you?

[2020] Yeah.

[2021] You'd go to churches on either Christmas.

[2022] or Easter, and you would sell your wares.

[2023] They'd wear them to church?

[2024] Well, they'd be.

[2025] Do you think they'd own it or they'd be, I think they'd be upset?

[2026] Well, I do think they'd be upset.

[2027] Yeah, I think that those Christians probably are wanting people to believe that they're there more frequently than that.

[2028] I know, but they should just own it.

[2029] Like, it's okay.

[2030] If you just want that sense of community two times a year, that's fine.

[2031] Yeah.

[2032] No one's business.

[2033] Judging you?

[2034] Well, people are judging them.

[2035] A lot of people are, but we aren't.

[2036] Yeah, no. Oh, the John Kerry war stuff that happened during the campaign.

[2037] So during the 2004 campaign, a political issue that gained widespread public attention was his war record.

[2038] And in TV advertisements and in a book called Unfit for Command, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, question.

[2039] and details of his military service record and circumstances relating to the award of his combat medals.

[2040] And so that really affected his campaign and stuff.

[2041] And then it was later totally discredited and all of these people that like served with him said none of that was true.

[2042] But, you know, when people hear something, they can't unhear it.

[2043] And I'd hate that people can't unhear stuff.

[2044] Yeah, it's just there's a certain layer of, of shittiness to try to rob somebody of their war hero status.

[2045] It seems like a particular ring of Dante's Inferno should be reserved for those people.

[2046] Yeah, it's a low blow.

[2047] It's really rank.

[2048] Yeah.

[2049] Yeah, it's just kind of a real shit move.

[2050] But you know what I mean about that?

[2051] Like, it's so unfair because we live in this society, especially now.

[2052] I mean, not even really then.

[2053] But now, if you put something on social media.

[2054] and it like gains heat.

[2055] And then it's, you know, it becomes this huge thing.

[2056] And it's not true.

[2057] The retraction is never a story.

[2058] Only the false headline.

[2059] Or even if people then recognize like, oh, that wasn't actually true.

[2060] You still somehow still associate the negative thing with the person.

[2061] And you can't like, I don't know.

[2062] It's just hard for people to divorce those two.

[2063] And it's very scary.

[2064] Mm -hmm.

[2065] I think it's scary.

[2066] You do, yeah.

[2067] You're scared of it.

[2068] I think it's like a pop -out scared.

[2069] You think that could be the theme of a horror movie?

[2070] Yeah.

[2071] You do.

[2072] Let's write it.

[2073] We'll use the beat sheet from Save the Cat.

[2074] Okay, wonderful.

[2075] And then I'll write it.

[2076] Wonderful.

[2077] And then in it, we will unveil a new term for Christmas and Easter churchgoers.

[2078] Yeah.

[2079] We should also employ Sedaris to help us with this.

[2080] I feel like he would have a great.

[2081] He's good at coming up with words.

[2082] Mm -hmm.

[2083] Gunderpants.

[2084] Also, we should point out that we have been corrected about the first, second, third degree burns.

[2085] We heard from a lot of people.

[2086] We now realize first is least significant and third is the burniest.

[2087] Even as I was saying it, I knew that it was wrong.

[2088] Well, I don't think that we were claiming to know one way or another.

[2089] I think we were saying, oh, maybe for something about this feels like it might be at a descending scale as well.

[2090] Yeah.

[2091] Like the stupid defecond system.

[2092] And I wanted it, we just wanted it to be, yeah, we need you more than me, mainly me. Yeah, you wanted some cooperation because I was claiming that it was a stupid system that no systems diminishing numeric value as the threat is increased.

[2093] Right, right.

[2094] Yeah, more evidence to your point, I guess.

[2095] Although you did have me on murder.

[2096] That's true.

[2097] First is the worst.

[2098] Oh, speaking of that, another correction.

[2099] that I came up with during my sickness, I realized that I was mispronounced.

[2100] I was also mispronouncing Emily, because I was saying Emily Radagikowski, because that's what it's spelled.

[2101] But it's actually pronounced Emily Radikowski.

[2102] The J is silent.

[2103] Okay.

[2104] I sincerely couldn't hear a difference in the way you just said both those words.

[2105] It just sounded to me like, jaj, jaj, jac.

[2106] You know, like it's just a ton of consonants.

[2107] Yeah.

[2108] Just like way too many consonants for my brain to follow.

[2109] Radigakowski versus Radikowski.

[2110] Okay.

[2111] Now I heard it there.

[2112] But if you put an Emily between there, I'm probably going to lose it again.

[2113] All right.

[2114] Yeah.

[2115] So I want to say Radikowsky.

[2116] Kowski.

[2117] Oh, E. Radikowski.

[2118] Yeah.

[2119] But we already determined she doesn't like me. So I don't really need to ever say her name again.

[2120] Okay.

[2121] I went down a little rabbit hole on her.

[2122] Oh, you did?

[2123] Mm -hmm.

[2124] And what did you find?

[2125] She's married Well, she is She's recently married Wed Maybe she was going to her wedding When you saw her And that's why she had to She got married at the Super Bowl Do you think she only got married To get rid of that name?

[2126] No, she probably loves that You think she's going to keep it?

[2127] Yeah, I think she kept it But think of her name was Emily Blunt You know, that's a very easy name She probably would have her own Dior campaign I think she's probably really happy being unique.

[2128] Okay.

[2129] Right?

[2130] Well, I hope that for her.

[2131] I think she is.

[2132] She gets a lot of attention for it.

[2133] For the name?

[2134] For being her.

[2135] Uh -huh.

[2136] Okay.

[2137] For being uniquely her.

[2138] Yeah.

[2139] He said that they're trained as speech writers to always say that the words are the presidents.

[2140] Okay.

[2141] Right.

[2142] So you said, yeah.

[2143] The line they're supposed to tow is that those are the president's words, not theirs.

[2144] Yeah.

[2145] And I would not like that.

[2146] Yeah, you would want the credit, what you said.

[2147] Yeah, because I have a problem with credit.

[2148] Yeah.

[2149] It's one of my things.

[2150] Yeah, well, it previously was one of mine.

[2151] Really?

[2152] Yeah, used to really, back in my groundlings days, I was real hung up on it.

[2153] And I think I've said this before on here, but someone gave me the best piece of advice ever because I was certain that someone stole the sketch and that it had made it on the TV.

[2154] I think I've told you this.

[2155] It's way too coincidental that I had a will for Brimley sketch running.

[2156] Who the fuck was writing Will for Brumley sketches in 2002?

[2157] And then I turned on the Saturday Night Live and all of a sudden there's a Will for Brimley sketch on.

[2158] So I was like, oh my gosh, that was stolen for me. And some wise sage person said to me, if you think that's your last great idea, then you should use everything at your disposal to fight for this, get credit, sue, whatever it is.

[2159] if you think that's your last great idea.

[2160] But if you think you have an infinite amount of great ideas, just get focused on those.

[2161] And I took that advice.

[2162] That was good advice.

[2163] That is good advice.

[2164] Very good advice.

[2165] Life's too short.

[2166] But the amount of time.

[2167] It's just the injustice, you know?

[2168] Yeah.

[2169] And I have a strong sense of injustice.

[2170] That's always infuriated me in the past.

[2171] But again, it's just now you're putting more energy and time into something that was already a bummer.

[2172] So you're just expanding how much bummer there is.

[2173] Sure.

[2174] You know?

[2175] Again, unless you think you can win and somehow make millions of dollars off proving you're right, but...

[2176] Yeah.

[2177] Blackwater, people probably know, but in case they don't, is an American private military company founded by...

[2178] Eric Prince.

[2179] Mm -hmm.

[2180] Former Navy SEAL.

[2181] You knew that.

[2182] I did.

[2183] And his family, the Prince family, makes visors in automotive components.

[2184] and they were manufactured in Holland, Michigan.

[2185] And the princes basically own the entire town of Holland, Michigan.

[2186] Really?

[2187] They're absurdly rich.

[2188] His dad was a billionaire.

[2189] Oh, wow.

[2190] And he, yes, started Blackwater with some of Dad's money.

[2191] And then I believe he sold Blackwater for over a billion dollars as well.

[2192] They're very, very politically motivated, huge right -wing donors.

[2193] They do believe that all of our wars in the Middle East were Christian Crusades.

[2194] Interesting.

[2195] Because I sold a, you remember I sold a show to FX called Killing Machines and it was all about private security.

[2196] So I ended up learning a ton about all those different.

[2197] Cool.

[2198] Yeah.

[2199] Yeah.

[2200] It's been renamed.

[2201] It's not Blackwater anymore.

[2202] Is it triple canopy?

[2203] No. It was XE services.

[2204] Okay.

[2205] I might not be saying that, right?

[2206] Maybe it's like XE is something else.

[2207] But now it's called the, it's called Academy.

[2208] I think it's called Academy.

[2209] It's spelled with an I. Interesting.

[2210] Oh, this is spelled.

[2211] Well, they own this gigantic compound in North Carolina called the Swamp.

[2212] And I think where they make, well, they also have their own, they have their own Air Force, basically.

[2213] So I know that they basically are a air service for.

[2214] hire for like the CIA and stuff.

[2215] So they make a lot of money there.

[2216] But also their training facility is used by local law enforcement, state law enforcement.

[2217] All this, all these different agencies train at the swamp.

[2218] So they make a good amount of money there as well.

[2219] Cool.

[2220] Yeah.

[2221] That's nice.

[2222] It's cool when you sell a TV show.

[2223] You just have to like learn a lot about it.

[2224] Yeah, that's fine.

[2225] And I don't know why else I would have gone down that rabbit hole.

[2226] Yeah.

[2227] I wish I would sell a show about chemistry or something.

[2228] You could learn.

[2229] That's all.

[2230] That's everything?

[2231] Yeah.

[2232] Well, I'm so glad you got to sit so close to a long -time crush of yours.

[2233] Me too.

[2234] We need to get some long -time crushes of mine up in here.

[2235] Sure do.

[2236] Could you get on that?

[2237] Sure.

[2238] Okay, great.

[2239] Look forward to.

[2240] I've been trying, actually.

[2241] You have behind closed doors.

[2242] Yeah.

[2243] That sounds like you.

[2244] Monica's the best present giver there is.

[2245] Well, other than my wife.

[2246] She is also an incredible present giver.

[2247] She is, yeah.

[2248] The both of your twins in that thoughtfulness category.

[2249] Twins in many ways.

[2250] Okay, well, I think Rob died, just so everyone knows.

[2251] Rob is passed because of the heat.

[2252] So I think we should probably stop.

[2253] He didn't take his shirt off.

[2254] He didn't take a shirt off and he's dead.

[2255] Now, luckily for you, you've been conditioning yourself over the last four days of a temperature of 103.

[2256] Many fevers, many, many, many.

[2257] So it feels cool to you.

[2258] You're acclimated.

[2259] Rob passed.

[2260] I do want to tend to his corpse right now.

[2261] Okay.

[2262] Love you.

[2263] Love you.

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